(no subject)
Title: The Cooper Methodology or, How Sheldon Lost the Bet
Author: Manda (so_pseudogoth)
Category: Oneshot, 1/1
Rating: NC-17 (Sheldon/Penny smut! Explicit! Not gratuitous though, I'd like to think I did it tastefully.)
Summary: This is a response to the plot bunny posted here by mrsvc about Sheldon losing a bet and having to go across the hall to seduce Penny. But what happens if Penny gets more than just an acting job out of the event?
Warnings: There is explicit Shenny smut in here, and a litttttttle bit of bad language (I think I cussed like once). There are a few spoilers in here, nothing much, just references to things and tiny little in-jokes, if you're fairly caught up with the current season you will be totally fine, I don't think I gave anything away.
Author's Note: This is my first BBT fic and obviously, first attempt at a Sheldon/Penny. Please enjoy. I ALWAYS love comments, criticisms, feedback, etc. :D And I am so excited to be a part of this community!!!
"I can't believe it," Leonard said, squinting through the thick lenses of his glasses at the notebook on the coffee table. The table was pathologically neat, their laptops sitting closed and quietly humming, everyone's drinks on coasters, just the way Sheldon insisted... and except for the incredulous, stunned look on one Dr. Sheldon Cooper's face, everything was exactly normal in Apartment 4A.
"Sheldon, you were wrong," Raj whispered in a reverent tone, turning his dark gaze to the insufferably smug Wolowitz. Howard was sitting back in his usual seat, arms folded over his chest, a self-satisfied grin on his mouth.
"But that isn't possible!" Sheldon squeaked, his voice breaking with emotional distress. "I've never been wrong about anything! Misguided, perhaps, but I remedied the situation before anyone caught on--- this is ridiculous. I don't even know how I should feel right now!" He hesitated, then looked at Leonard. "How is one supposed to act when proven wrong in such a blatantly inexcusable manner, Leonard?"
Leonard paused, then arched a brow. "Gee, I dunno. With some humility, perhaps."
"No, that'll never work," Sheldon dismissed, shaking his head a bit. He still looked crestfallen, and tapered fingers reached for the notebook and picked it up. Studied the equation written there. "I can't believe I missed it! It was such an obvious question!"
"No one can be perfect all the time, Sheldon," Leonard ventured, not exactly sure why he always felt the need to try and cheer up his roommate but doing it anyway. He knew that this feeling of failure was entirely new to his colleague; it was one variable Sheldon had never accounted for.
"Of course one can," Sheldon snapped irritably. "I was distracted, that's all. Raj was discussing the upcoming Watchmen movie and I was following that train of thought when I was trying to work out the equation, I should've been paying attention closer. I want a do-over." He made a face at Howard petulantly.
"There are no do-overs," Raj countered instantly. He was entirely too pleased and amazed at the knowledge of knowing that Sheldon was fallible after all; no way would he let this monumental moment slide.
Sheldon's jaw dropped in objection. "Why not?!"
"You realize what this means, Cooper," Howard said with a suggestive arch of his brow.
"Yes," Sheldon sighed. "That I have to concede defeat to the hands of an engineer. Oh, my mother would be so proud. If she knew what the difference between our statuses was, that is."
"Not only do you have to say 'You're the king, Wolowitz'," Howard informed him, leaning forward to pick up his can of Diet Coke, "but you have to do whatever I tell you to. It's called a 'dare' for a reason."
Sheldon eyed him warily. "I don't like the tone of this insinuation."
"And my dare is... you have to ask Penny out on a date."
"Excuse me?" Sheldon asked, taking a sip of his own cola.
"You heard me," Howard said, leaning back and folding his arms again.
"He can't do that," Leonard protested, shaking his head. Trying to plead Sheldon's case, though he wasn't entirely sure why; was he really that hung up on Penny still? It had been six months since her gentle rejection of him, and the stinging had subsided to a dull ache; he had Stephanie now, more or less, and Leslie Winkle if he wanted her, and they were both wonderful, but... he had to admit, neither of them quite got his proverbial motor going the way a pair of long tanned legs in Hello Kitty shorts and a bouncing blonde ponytail could.
"I can't do that," Sheldon echoed, nodding agreement.
"Why not?" Howard demanded. "It's my dare and that's what I dare you to do. No takebacks."
"For one, it's a more futile mission than the majority of Leslie Winkle's research," Sheldon said peevishly. "Which is quite saying something, isn't it? And for another, why does my punishment involve something that would be considered a reward if given to, say, Leonard?"
"Because Leonard didn't make the wager with me," Howard said firmly. "You can't go back on your word. You swore on Spock's honor."
Sheldon opened his mouth to protest again, then furrowed his brow. "Damn you for invoking the Nimoy Clause of our wagering by-laws," he said, smacking a closed fist into the opposite open palm. "Have you no shame?"
"Did you just ask Wolowitz if he had shame?" Leonard asked, lifting an incredulous brow.
"You're right, I see the error of my statement as clear as dihydrogen monoxide," Sheldon sighed. "Alright, Wolowitz. Outline the specifications of your so-called 'dare' for me. I want to ensure that I don't misinterpret what you're intending for me to do. Besides make a fool of myself, that is."
"Here's what you have to do," Howard said, leaning forward and waggling his brows.
- - -
"Penny."
Knockknockknock.
"Penny."
Knockknockknock.
"Pen---"
"Sheldon." She pulled the door open, arching a brow. He looked flustered and completely out of sorts, his hand poised in position to rap on her door again. He glanced down, then back up at her, eyes widened.
"Oh, I'm sorry, sweetie," she said, and pulled the door shut.
Sheldon exhaled, then knocked three times quickly. "Penny."
This time she opened it promptly on the third knock and smiled patiently. "You know, you've knocked more than three sets before I've answered before... that doesn't bother you?"
"No. Only when it's less than three. That's the number that is most---"
"Sheldon," she interrupted gently, holding up a hand and closing her eyes. "Ssh."
His mouth closed on cue, and he stood there.
Penny opened her eyes, giving herself a moment to take him in. If someone had told her back in Nebraska that when she moved to Pasadena she'd be sharing a living space, and her life, with the official So Cal Nerd Herd, she would've laughed. Not her, not drama-club-queen Penelope, with her honey-blonde hair and bright green eyes and gorgeous football playing boyfriends, with her decent grades and huge social circle. It wasn't that she was anti-nerd; she had always felt a twinge of sympathy and regret watching her string of handsome, rugged boyfriends grab the collars of skinny, acne-flecked boys with wide startled eyes, boys whose heads seemed destined for every toilet bowl they encountered between now and Bill Gates-level stardom. But she had never actively defended any of those victims in high school, and even at the community college she'd never raised a hand to venture answers; she'd let the nerdy kids handle it as she coasted through, half-dozing in the wake of her frequent hangovers.
But Leonard, Sheldon, Raj and even Wolowitz were different; they tugged at her heartstrings like small, geeky puppies, puppies that were perfectly adorable but had one ear that didn't stand up straight or had a kink in their tail or something. Some small imperfection, but it didn't make them any less precious in the big picture. They were needy, and affectionate, and loyal to faults, and they were so hopelessly hopeful that someone would someday take them home and love them just as they were. And for now, if that someone had to be Penny--- who would be able to teach them the basics of potty-training, socialization, and how to do a few tricks for the ladies--- then by god, she'd rise to the challenge.
Leonard, of course, was her favorite, because of his endearing crush on her, because of the fact that he had always treated her with respect, even idol-worship a few times. Raj was so harmless and sweet, and just once she hoped he would loosen his tongue without needing a few stiff drinks first; she had an idea there was a lot behind those dark eyes he was ready to say. Even Howard, who tended to be overbearing and sometimes downright pathetic with his attempts to impress the fairer sex, had his redeeming qualities, and she found herself equal parts disgusted and amused by his antics.
But Sheldon.
Sweet, clueless Sheldon. Sheldon who was so insufferably full of himself, so completely arrogant and stubborn that he would not be reasoned with unless you took to exploiting his few quirky weaknesses--- Sheldon who could somehow worm his way into your heart even as he insulted you to your face. Sheldon who wore neon orange thermal shirts (where did one even buy such atrocities?) under comic book t-shirts, who thought it was okay to wear clip-on ties, who refused to share any of his specially-labeled fiber-enhanced yogurt even when she'd run out of Yoplait and was craving it like crazy--- Sheldon was an altogether horse of a different color. The others, Penny had been able to pin down fairly quickly; they all just needed a good roll in the hay with a girl who had half a brain in her head and half an ounce of intuition between her thighs. But Sheldon didn't seem like sex would fix a damn thing inside his oversized head; he was so set in his ways, so blatantly asexual. He never batted an eye if she marched into their apartment in her skimpiest pajamas, only if she didn't use a coaster when putting her drink on the end table. He tuned her out when she whined about needing to get laid, but was all ears when she discussed a new quest she'd been propositioned for on Age of Conan.
Oh, Sheldon.
"Penny?"
His neurotic, slightly quavering voice took her out of her reverie, and she blinked, wondered how long she'd been standing there zoned out like a complete spaz. A little headshake, and she laughed. "Sorry, Shel. I totally spaced. What's up?"
"I believe the joke goes, 'the upper atmosphere'," Sheldon said primly. When Penny merely blinked at him, he explained meekly, "The sky."
"I see," she said, stifling a smile. "You made a joke. That's nice, should I write that down in case you deny it in the future?"
"I happen to have an excellent sense of humor," he sniffed, straightening himself to his full height. Penny tilted her head back to study him. How tall was he? Her guess put him somewhere around 6'4", but she couldn't be sure. Either way, he towered over her, and she didn't like to think about the fact that six days a month (when the chocolate cravings and the urge to eat the cheesecake she was serving to her tables overtook her), she probably outweighed him by a good ten pounds. "It isn't my fault that the vast majority of humanity can't appreciate the finer, subtler ways I choose to express it."
"Sheldon... are you going to tell me your purpose in coming over here, or should I just assume it was an excuse to try out your stand-up routine on me?" she asked dryly, arching a brow at him.
"No," he said, suddenly all business. "I am about to let you in on a secret that only four people in this world currently are aware of, myself included. I will require your full disclosure in this matter, and ask that you treat it with the ultimate discretion. If word got out about this... my entire reputation could be ruined. My Nobel Prize could be in jeopardy. Leslie Winkle would call me a dumbass again."
Penny blinked. "Wow, this is serious, isn't it?"
"As a pulmonary spasm. Now." He reached into his messenger bag to withdraw a sheaf of typed, double-spaced papers, neatly stapled together. "I'll need you to sign this and initial it twice, to ensure that you fully understand the code of discretion we're going with here."
She took the contract, then eyed the first few paragraphs, clearly skimming.
"I took into account that to you, swearing on the moral integrity of the inhabitants of the Enterprise might not have the same effect as it would to say, me, so I altered the contract to suit your own personal ethics perspective," he informed her.
Penny glanced up and smirked. "You want me to swear on my collection of Care Bears?"
He nodded, his face dead serious. He waited patiently while Penny shook her head, then scribbled something illegible on the signature line and initialed where he'd marked large Xs on the page. When she had finished, she handed it back to him, then said, "Can I know the secret now?"
Sheldon glanced over his shoulder furtively. "Not here," he mouthed in a stage whisper when he was facing her again. Penny lifted both brows, then looked past Sheldon. On the wall above their apartment door, where a sprinkler had once been mounted, she saw a blinking red light.
"Is that a webcam?" she asked quietly, her voice neutral.
"Wolowitz installed it specifically for this purpose," Sheldon murmured, trying to keep himself out of earshot of the camera. He faced Penny, a note of urgency in his voice. "He wants to see my epic failure. It will be, as he put it so eloquently, a lot like the most recent three Star Wars films."
"I see," Penny murmured. "So, um. What should we do?"
"I know this may seem unorthodox, and I hope it won't offend your sensibilities," Sheldon said anxiously, making a slightly pained expression, "but if you could, uh... if you could sort of pull me into your room and shut the door, I can explain further."
"What's wrong, you can't walk?" Penny asked, tilting her head.
"I can walk," Sheldon sniffed, flushing a bit. "I'd just appreciate it if you could, uh. Pull me. In. By my shirt."
Penny hesitated, then rolled her eyes. She was sure this was some ridiculous, amazing scheme the boys across the hall had concocted, though it surprised her that Sheldon should be the main enabler of the prank; normally he avoided awkward situations like the plague. Still, if she played along, maybe they could get this over with and she could go back to watching the "Snapped" marathon on Oxygen. That show never failed to get her pumped; she always wanted to call up ex-boyfriends to make them squirm.
One hand shot out and she grabbed Sheldon by his shirt collar. And, swear to God, he made a 'meep!' sound, caught off-guard by the effectiveness of the gesture; the petite blonde hauled him into her apartment and shoved the door shut, then released him. Sheldon made an indignant noise and set about straightening the layers of t-shirts he wore.
"My god, to think that's supposed to be arousing," he huffed. "It was like what I imagine being mauled by an angry tiger would be like."
"Wait, what?" Penny asked, blinking. "What's supposed to be arousing?"
Sheldon hesitated, then blushed. Penny'd never seen him in such a deep shade of red, except for his Flash t-shirt of course. It made him look all of twelve years old. A very tall, gangly twelve.
"The secret is... I challenged Wolowitz to a battle of wits. We were watching Jeopardy!, you see, and normally I don't engage in such mundane frivolities, the questions are supposed to be challenging but they're usually just child's play, but Leonard refused to change the channel. Wolowitz made an off-handed and ill-advised remark that I was threatened by the questions because they weren't specifically on theoretical physics--- can you imagine? He's an engineer, he has a master's degree, and he thought I was threatened by Alex Trebek's meager attempts to befuddle the general populace..."
"I get it, Sheldon. You and the guys were playing Jeopardy!. So then what?"
"We were writing down our answers for the final question, you know, to ensure that no one could cheat or change their answers, and... Wolowitz got it right."
"That's surprising," Penny said with an eyeroll, making sure to lay on the sarcasm thick so that maybe he'd pick up on it. "You guys are all super genuises. So Howard got it right. Big deal."
"...I did not."
Penny froze, then did a double-take. Sheldon was gazing at his knees, obviously quite ashamed of himself; his shoulders were slumped, his head down like an abused dog.
"Oh, sweetie," she began, shaking her head. She moved to slide an arm around his shoulders, but he moved precisely two inches away, just out of arm's reach without being outwardly offensive. "Right, no touching, sorry," she said. "Anyway. I'm sorry. Did Howard call you a dumbass?" she guessed.
"I should say not!" Sheldon sniffed self-righteously. "Jeopardy! be damned, my IQ runs laps around his and waves each time it passes by. No, the sad fact is, because Wolowitz challenged me, we were forced to make a wager... and since we weren't using actual money... we, uh... we did 'dares'. And I lost. So Howard made a wager that I should, uh. Come over here."
"That doesn't seem so weird. You guys come over here all the time. We might as well have tin cans on a string between our apartments," Penny laughed.
"Or something slightly less archaic," Sheldon smirked, "but I'll allow your exaggeration for the purpose of the conversation."
"Thanks," Penny murmured, rolling her eyes.
"Regardless. No. He dared me to come over here and uh..." Sheldon paused, clearly running through a mental thesaurus. "...and seduce you," he finally decided, using Wolowitz's exact wording.
Penny could feel her face drop, as well as her jaw.
"Oh, don't worry. I understand that it's completely against your code of ethics to have copulation with someone of my stature, and to be frank, I myself have little investment in the matter either. But I can't eat the proverbial crow in front of Wolowitz twice in one twenty-four period.. or one lifetime, while we're on the subject... so I would really appreciate it if you could play along on this and perhaps help me concoct a good story to tell them? I would, what's it called, owe you a favor?"
Penny glanced up, watching the absurdly hopeful expression on Sheldon's face. So eager to prove Howard wrong, to show that he was once again Dr. Sheldon Cooper, PhD, top dog in 4A. At any cost, even coming over here to ask Penny to lie for him and with him.
"You're such an awful liar, Sheldon," Penny said. "Howard's going to know you're lying. They all will. You won't be very credible.. They know me better than that."
"I anticipated their skepticism," Sheldon said instantly, unruffled. "I planned on telling them that you got completely inebriated and had intercourse with me as a way to get revenge at one of your ex-boyfriends. I jotted down a quick database of the most recent ones that I could remember, I think Mark could be a viable motivation for your vengeance-and-alcohol-fueled involvement with me. We could just tell them that you were drunk and didn't remember a thing."
"...you honestly think that they'll buy that I was drunk enough to sleep with you?" Penny asked before her brain could catch up to her mouth. She registered the momentarily stung expression on Sheldon's face, then blustered, "I mean, you know, I don't even drink much, and you're you, you're like a brother, you're like asexual!"
"While it's true," Sheldon began, a note of ice in his tone, "that I don't traditionally pursue the attentions of females-- and certainly not ones on a level of desirability as yourself--- I will have you know for the record that I am not asexual. I just find intercourse a distraction from my Nobel Prize."
"What do you call Halo, then?"
"Training for the zombie apocalypse," Sheldon said without missing a beat. "Honestly, Penny, sometimes I wonder."
They sat in quiet for a moment, and then Penny lifted her head. "Well maybe we could fake it pretty convincingly. I mean, you know, a few hickeys, mess your hair up, maybe pop a button off your khakis..."
"What?" Sheldon squeaked, looking over at her sharply. She had a wicked, creative grin on her face, warming to the idea as her theatrical side took over.
"Yeah, it could be great. We could make it look really good, you know. Howard would die, Sheldon. He would seriously like, keel over and die."
Sheldon was silent for a long beat, pondering, before he replied, "I suppose it's possible. Wolowitz would never suspect I could actually get anywhere with you, since he himself cannot."
"The only one of you who's tried with any kind of class is Leonard," Penny laughed. "And if I had slept with Leonard, all of you would've died in shock."
"Not particularly," Sheldon said mildly, shifting in his seat to straighten the pile of ex-boyfriend data he'd printed from his computer to show her.
"What? Really?"
"No. Leonard's probably the most desirable of our group, I suppose, if one were to apply a simplistic 'rating' system to us."
"What makes you think so?" Penny asked, intrigued. And more than a little weirded out at hearing Sheldon call Leonard 'desirable' in such a matter of fact tone.
"Well, for example. If a female was prone to men who are actually extremely romantic but have trouble expressing themselves, and have a mother complex... and don't mind dating an engineer who uses his master's degree to get into girls' pants... they would find a kindred spirit in Wolowitz. If she was into traditional, old-fashioned, introverted exotic men with a penchant for Dr. Who and late-series Star Trek, Koothrappali wouldn't disappoint. If she preferred humorous, accomodating, slightly-passive men who are surprisingly drawn to women despite their physical or mental shortcomings--- for example, you, and Leslie Winkle, neither of whom are exactly floating at the top of the IQ barrel--- then Leonard would be the ideal choice, I suppose. Of all of us, he's had the most luck in love, you realize. First you, which we all thought was sort of the Holy Grail if you will, and then Leslie Winkle--- you'll excuse me as I insert a shudder of revulsion here--- and now Stephanie. He's, as I said once before, a veritable mack daddy in our midst."
Penny smiled faintly. "And what about you? What would you have to offer a girl, Dr. Cooper?"
"Me?" he seemed surprised and a bit caught off-guard by the question, but gave a nervous little titter of a laugh. "Well. I can assure with 98.67% confidence that our offspring would be evolutionary light years ahead of their peers. I have a working knowledge of string theory that only fourteen other people on the planet possess, and seven of them aren't in this hemisphere. And I can cite issue numbers for any major story arc in a mainstream comic book published by either Marvel or DC from the 1960s to present day."
"Well, aren't you a catch," Penny drawled, grinning. "I'm sure there's a girl out there who'd just be knocked out of her socks about that, Sheldon."
"Oh, I don't know. I haven't met one yet. There was one girl at ComiCon once, she seemed mildly interested in me but I think it was mostly that I had impeccably rendered Spock cosplay going on. I have no interest in being someone's fetishized love slave. Especially as a Vulcan."
Penny laughed a little, then shook her head. "Oh... kay," she drew out, rolling her eyes. "Okay, come over here."
"Why?" His voice was so plaintive, questioning. Utterly innocent.
"Because I can't give you some hickeys if you're like five feet away from me."
"I thought about that," Sheldon said, "and I have a proposal. Do you have a vaccuum with attachments?" He cast a doleful eye around her hurricane-just-hit apartment, then murmured, "I'd like to think the answer is 'no', but I'm prone to believing this chaos is more due to laziness than lack of household cleaning instruments. Anyway, if you have a vaccuum with an attachable hose, I think that would create the desired effect. Perhaps a bit more circular than normal, but it isn't as though any of them are overly familiar with the aesthetic makeup of a 'hickey' anyway."
"Sheldon, I'm not going to vaccuum your neck! That's totally weird. Besides, I can give you one in like two seconds, I'm practically a professional. Who knows how long a hose could take?"
Sheldon hesitated, then grimaced. "It's so undignified. Not to mention unsanitary. If you were to bite me and break skin---" he shuddered drastically. "Well. The amount of bacteria in a human mouth is staggering, Penny, it really is."
"I won't break skin," she said with another exasperated eye roll. "Sheldon, I'm not freaking Edward Cullen here or something. I'm not going to drink your blood. It's just a few little hickeys. I can even do them on your shoulder or something if you want to be able to cover them at work."
"Who?" he asked.
"Nevermind," she said. "It doesn't surprise me that you haven't heard of Twilight, but trust me, you're not missing much there. Anyway, look, do you want this done right or not?"
"...I suppose," he said, shifting. If there was one thing Dr. Sheldon Cooper didn't do, it was something half-assed... and if he was going to go through with this farce to get the others off his back, he would have to put his inhibitions aside and just let Penny work her deceptive magic. "Just... try not to make me look too obscene, alright? I do work this week."
"Done," she said with a grin, quite pleased with herself. She wasn't sure why it should feel like such a triumph to give hickeys to Sheldon Cooper, of all the people in the world, but it did; she couldn't keep the cat-who-ate-the-canary smile off her glossed lips as she pointed to the couch beside herself. Sheldon hesitated, unsure. "Look, I know you're concerned about optimal air flow and cushion density and all that jazz, but for like two seconds, make this sacrifice for me. I'm doing you a huge favor," she reminded him, and he sighed, relinquishing his chosen seat in the wheely office chair to the couch cushion beside her. After bouncing slightly a time or two to test for springyness, he settled, and that was when Penny pounced.
In retrospect, perhaps she came on too strong; this was Sheldon, after all, who was afraid of cereal with low bran content. He didn't get blonde girls in Victoria's Secret tank tops and Seven jeans launching themselves at him very often, she would bet; but what the hell, right? Her lips found his throat, and her first thought was: soft. He had surprisingly soft skin, and smelled like soap, something clean and simple like Irish Spring. The guys she knew usually bathed in Axe or something before a date to try and make themselves smell appealing, but Sheldon had a very innocent odor, like childhood sort of. Like a guy who didn't exactly sweat much, who showered twice a day on a strictly timed schedule, and who ate a very balanced and quite nutritious diet most of the time (with the weekly springing for Asian cuisine, of course). In short, he smelled amazing. She kissed his neck softly to prime him, and almost laughed when she felt his muscles contract under her hands. Muscles. Really. They could be called that only in the most anatomical sense, because they were far from distinct in his body, but she could feel them tense. He was nervous, poor baby.
"It's just me, Sheldon," she murmured, trying to put him at ease.
He gave a high-pitched squawk of a laugh. "Oh yes. I'll keep that in mind. Nothing strange about that, no way."
She grazed her teeth against his throat, marveling at the definition of his slender neck. He was so thin, and she'd sort of expected him to feel fragile or mousy underneath her administrations, but that wasn't turning out to be the case at all. He was wiry, skinny yes, but there was some kind of strength potential in his lanky limbs, and she found herself surprisingly loving the feel of his collarbone against her nose. She bit down, unable to help herself from giving the tiniest little groan; it'd been awhile since she'd gotten any, and if she didn't think too hard about it being Sheldon... it was pretty nice to be in this situation again.
"Penny. Penny. Penny," he whispered with increasing urgency in his voice, and she pulled back, wiping shimmery pink gloss off his alabaster skin so that she could admire her handiwork. A nice red swatch was already livid against the skin, and would purple in just a few minutes.
"You okay?" she asked, pulling back enough to gaze into his eyes. They were so dark and completely bottomless; she couldn't see one inch into that brilliant brain of his. Her own were a clear, crystalline green; Sheldon held her gaze, his heart thudding, unnerved by his own reaction to her bite.
"Yes," he managed in a squeak.
"Good," she breathed. "One more, you think?"
"Two should be sufficient," he whispered a bit hoarsely. He lifted his chin, not breaking their eye contact.
"Other side?" she asked, moving her head to the right a bit, pushing her own loose curls off her shoulder.
"...I think this one should perhaps be less visible," he said, and they were both a bit taken aback by his boldness there. Penny paused, then smiled slightly.
"Your pick," she allowed, then reached up to tug on his t-shirt. He reluctantly lifted his arms a bit to let her raise the hem up, and when the comic book shirt was off, he remained in the orange thermal. His arms went down over his chest when she went to remove that one too. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," he murmured, glancing away at last. "Just... you can pull the collar off my shoulder a little. I don't need to take it off."
"Alright," she said, arching a brow. She'd thought Sheldon would be into taking his shirt off in front of her; Wolowitz would've been naked or sporting some kind of hideous leopard print man-kini thong affair by now, she was positive. But Sheldon seemed so shy, so painfully reserved.
Penny pulled at the soft cotton shirt until it moved a bit and she could see the hollow of his throat, the smooth white of his shoulder. Her breath caught. He had freckles there. She'd never really realized it, but she had a subconscious love for freckles, for their haphazard placement on pale skin, and Sheldon had just enough; a smattering of ginger-colored ones on his white shoulder and it was game over for her. She bowed her head to kiss them, and her hair tickled his chin and he let out a little shiver in response, and then Penny's palms were on his chest, sliding down, scrunching up a fistful of the waffled thermal material, pulling. Urgent. She bit him, but this time there was a lot more suckling involved, and his pulse accelerated to warp-speed in his veins. When she finished the love bite, she drew her head back slowly, and her tongue slipped out to touch the new mark; she licked his throat slowly, starting at his collarbone and working her way toward his jawline, and Sheldon was trembling under her hands when she finished.
They sat in silence, gazing at each other, both of them breathing quickly with nostrils slightly flared.
"How do they look?" Sheldon finally asked, his voice unsure and soft.
"...perfect," Penny whispered, her lips barely moving. "Sheldon?"
"Yes."
"...could I kiss you?"
"Why would you want to?" he asked, earnestly confused.
"...Does everything have to have an explanation?"
"Of course it does, Penny. I'm a scientist, we deal only in facts and reason."
"Alright. Here's a reason," she murmured, leaning in. "Because... you're different. Because you, in your weird, quirky, fucked-up little way, actually care about me and show that a lot. Because you don't have an agenda when it comes to someone else's heart, or your own. Because you're so innocent and---"
"Penny, I'm hardly innocent. For Pete's sake, I'm a level 84 mage, do you think I've made it that far without meeting a few wenches in my time?" Sheldon asked, raising his brows. Penny stared at him for a moment before she burst out laughing, and he allowed himself the rarest known experience on earth; Sheldon Cooper's lips twitched and then curled into a smile. It was not the ghastly caricature of one he had sported when pretending to be happy for Koothrappali's success; it was not the self-congratulatory smirk of condescension he saved for his lesser colleagues. No. It was a genuine smile, and it looked positively wonderful on his normally tense features.
So Penny kissed him.
To say that the kiss meant fireworks would be both inaccurate and a metaphor inexcusable to Sheldon, who would undoubtedly launch into a spiel about how the chemistry between two people could, in no universe, actually result in a combustible fusion, but Penny had only been kissed better by one other person in her long history of kisses. To Sheldon, it was the best kiss he could've ever envisioned, and he didn't spend much time thinking about such things; it was a revolution because every (well, almost every) single thought of string theory and algorithms and paradoxes flew from his tangled, convoluted mind and for a moment he found peace. For the first time since he had learned to read at the age of two (with developing comprehension, of course; it wasn't exactly Hawkings, but he could read the hell out of Dr. Seuss by three) his mind was calm and uncluttered; he wasn't worried about what side of the couch he was seated on, or the comfort level in the air temperature of the room, or working on some naggling little bit of his equation in a distant part of his brain. He wasn't reviewing Klingon in the back of his head (one had to keep brushed-up on foreign languages, they decayed in your mind if left unused for too long) or worrying about if they needed to buy more dishwashing liquid; there was only some strawberry lip gloss and the feel of a soft, surprisingly pleasant tongue on his teeth and the sound of a very soft, pleasure-laden little whimpery noise that escaped Penny's throat. Had he caused that? Scientific method of questioning called to logic that yes, he had; there was no other stimulus currently being visited upon the blonde, so the process of elimination led him to conclude that her source of pleasure was him. Interesting. He couldn't remember ever having inspired such a sound from someone else before; he decided to try for a repeat, just to be sure his conclusion was sound. In science, after all, one had to test a thousand times before they could be sure their hypothesis was 100% foolproof.
Sheldon reached up tentatively and his hands rested on Penny's sides. No. That felt odd. He slid them upwards slightly and felt the distinct ridges of her bra beneath the thin fabric of her camisole, and a warmth spread across his cheeks. South, his hands found the bell-curve of her hips and rested there, unsure of where else they should be; her arms were draped around his neck, fingers pressed into his back through his shirt, and he could hear her breathing sort of skipping along unevenly.
"Penny?" he whispered against her lips. "Penny. Penny."
"Yes," she huffed back, slightly impatient at having her half-starved kisses broken off for a conversation.
"Are you alright?"
"What? Yeah..."
"Your breathing. Its accelerated rate and the rapidness of your pulse led me to think that maybe you were having some kind of physiological reaction to what we were doing... you aren't going to faint, are you? I don't have any smelling salts with me, they're all across the hall."
"No... Sheldon, this is what happens..." she murmured, trying to catch her breath. "Haven't you ever made out before?"
"Is that what we're doing?" he asked with interest. "Hm. I'd heard the term, of course, but I wasn't sure it was exactly this."
"Well, it starts like this," she laughed softly, shaking her head and touching her forehead to his. "It usually keeps going. Without talking."
"Oh. You don't communicate as a predecessor to intimacy?"
"Not usually. And not... you know, like this. You're sort of, uh, killing the mood."
"I'm sorry," Sheldon said sincerely. "I wasn't aware." And he kissed her again.
- - -
It amazed her that someone so devastatingly brilliant could be so innocuous; he was a unicorn, the rarest untouched species she'd ever seen, and he was in her bedroom. Of course, it had nearly given him a coronary having to step across the dirty laundry strewn across the threshold, and for the first time she could remember Penny felt a pang of self-consciousness at her sloppy housekeeping skills and wished she'd done a better job of using her hamper this week. But once he got past the initial nervousness of being in a girl's private quarters, Sheldon seemed almost to transform. He was like a ferret, moving around the room touching things, not particularly rearranging them but just taking note of them. She flicked on the pink bedside lamp, bathing the room in soft mauve light, and then watched him. He had fluid, graceful movements, and his head sort of bobbed when he walked, like a bird.
Penny stood beside the bed and hooked her thumbs in the waistband of the small shorts she wore. Without pretense or even looking at him, she eased them down her thighs and stepped out of them, straightening up slowly. Sheldon had ceased poking at the toys on her dresser and was gazing at her with interest. His eyes began at the freefall tumble of golden wheat-blonde hair, the curve of her shoulders, the delicate lace of the pink silky camisole she wore... the slope of her stomach and hips, the sleek taut brown skin of her thighs and the muscled angle of her calves. Her feet, arched, pink toenail polish and a tiny silver ankle bracelet, a toe ring on her left foot. He lifted his gaze back to her face and saw that she was smiling slightly. Dressed in just the camisole and a pair of hip-hugger panties, Penny thought she would feel a bit more comfortable; she was often butt-naked by now, with the men she brought home--- not men. The boys. The boys who thought that expensive, flashy cars and cologne and designer shirts could make up for their lack of sensitivity or intellect. Guys who still gave swirlies or pantsed the geeks; the geeks much like the one who stood before her now, his expression soft and skittish in the muted lamplight. Sheldon would either come a step forward and kiss her again, or he would cut and run back to 4A now; either way, their entire dynamic had changed forever, and she knew that she could never again sneak into his bedroom to ask about Age of Conan. Not after tonight.
But she didn't regret it, and after a moment's deliberation, Sheldon took a step forward.
- - -
To be a scientist, one must constantly be learning, observing, expanding. One must take what one knows and apply it; one must never rule out possibilities until they are proven completely impossible.
As such, Sheldon found no plausible reason why he should not engage in intercourse with Penny. She was sober, she was beautiful, and for some reason even his advanced brain couldn't comprehend, she was interested and willing. And he liked it, liked the smooth feel of her skin beneath his palms, liked how she arched her back just slightly if he curled his fingers through her hair, and most of all, liked those tiny whimpering sounds he could coax from her every so often. He was a perfectionist and he liked to do things precisely; Penny gasped in surprised and disbelief when Sheldon's hand moved over the soft vulnerable stretch of her inner thigh, his lips against her collarbone.
"Penny."
"Yes." Only once that time; they were making progress already.
"Penny, could you take your shirt off?" he murmured, his cheeks flaming, his nose against her clavicle.
She smiled faintly and shifted on the mattress, tugging the hem up over her flat belly to bare herself to him. She wasn't sure why she would feel more naked under Sheldon's eyes than she did under Brian's or Mike's or Eric's; perhaps because she desperately wanted him to like what he saw.
"Sheldon?"
He glanced up at the sound of his own name, at the tone of her voice. Penny, insecure? But it was there, the faintest glimmer of uncertainty on her face, on those glittery lips and her clear green eyes and he twitched his lips again, the feeling alien but also somehow completely natural.
He was a scientist. He missed nothing.
His hands slid over her, fingers splayed; he marveled at the texture difference between, for example, the soft underside of her left breast and the pebbled hard-candy texture of her right nipple. He took his time distinguishing the variations between the fine downy blonde hairs on her forearm versus the waxed-smooth expanses of her thighs, and when Penny reached up, undoubtedly trying to take control--- she was, he remembered dully in the back of his brain, a big ol' five--- he surprised them both by catching her wrist in his fingers and pushing her hand away firmly.
"Ssh," he murmured, his voice low and barely above a whisper. His warm breath grazing her shoulder. "First thing you do in a new experiment... observing."
And he was. Penny got the feeling that Sheldon, for all his facetiousness and attention to detail, was memorizing her every inch, was committing every bit of this event to his brain for later perusal or replay. He was trained to take in every single thing he saw, touched, felt, thought, and no one was better at doing something perfectly than Dr. Sheldon Cooper, PhD.
His hands moved lower now, slow concentric circles across her abdomen and hipbone, and then they played at the hem of the lacy panties she wore. Unsure if he should proceed.
"What's the next step, Sheldon?" Penny whispered breathily, reclining her head into the pillows.
"What?" he whispered hoarsely.
"What's the next step in a new experiment?"
"...Define the question," he murmured, sliding his hand over her pelvic bone. She lifted her hips slightly in invitation, and then smiled slightly.
"Does that answer your question?" she sighed, turning her blushing cheek to the cool cotton of the pillowcase.
Sheldon wordlessly pulled off her panties; they slipped silently down her thighs, and he dropped them into the overflowing hamper on the side of her bed before returning his hands to their previous location.
"You're still dressed," she observed, inhaling as he skimmed the tips of carefully-clipped and manicured nails over her neatly-waxed bikini area.
"This experiment isn't about me, Penny," Sheldon breathed. "It never was."
She made a soft sound in response, then closed her eyes. "What's the next step?"
She felt him shift on the bed, and then warm breath touched her thigh. She drew in a sharp inhale and her lashes fluttered; his hands were incredibly patient as he moved them over her long legs, then gently drew them apart.
"Form a hypothesis... and perform experimentation. Collect data," he recited in that same quiet, considering voice. Thoughtful, even now.
Penny opened her eyes and gazed down the length of her torso. Sheldon was kneeling at the foot of the mattress, and she was surprised by how graceful he looked, not gangly at all. His short dark hair was slightly mussed, his eyes very round and wide, the pupils blown like a drug addict's. His lips parted, slightly shining from where he'd licked them in nervousness. His hands on her thighs, which were spread just slightly. Penny couldn't remember having been this aroused in a long time; even her jock lays couldn't get her this revved with anticipation, this quivering and helpless at their hands. She wanted to beg him to touch her, and so she did just that.
"Penny," he chided softly. "You can't rush science."
She opened her eyes again and saw that he was smiling. Somewhat mischievously, this time.
And then his head lowered.
Apparently Sheldon had formed his hypothesis.
The experiment, as they say, was a success. He had never done it before, of that Penny was positive, but she had no doubt that he was a very fast learner and excellent at deducing what was working and what wasn't. His tongue, which could deliver a brilliant lecture or cut someone's ego to ribbons in seconds, was good for something else as well, and he lashed it against her tirelessly, even as she cried out with increasing volume and frequency and her hands slid down to grip his close-cropped hair. She tried not to direct him too much, because he was finding things out for himself and doing a spot-on job of it, but every so often she'd nudge him one way or another and he'd instantly situate himself to find the angle she wanted. He was, in fact, damn near a perfect lover for this reason; he was doing his job impeccably. Collecting data and putting it to work almost the instant he figured it out. Within minutes, Penny was half-sobbing with pleasure, her back arching violently off the bed, amazing herself with the intensity of the orgasm that ripped through her. Sheldon drew back, brows arched, and before she had a second to recover he was moving his fingertips across his lips, studying them in the pale lavender light of her lamp, touching the tip of his tongue to his fingerprints.
She lay there, still slightly trembling with the lack of control, the sick-spiral of emotions inside her where she'd come. "Oh my god, Sheldon... that was incredible."
"The hypothesis was a good one, then," he surmised, chuckling, quite pleased with himself. "A success for us both."
"Let me..." Penny murmured, trying to pull him up so that he'd lay on top of her, wanting more, needing to complete the cycle. She wanted to see Sheldon's naked body as well, wanted to kiss his sharp hipbones and find out if the rumor was true about tall skinny guys, was being revisited by the memory of the day he and Leonard had come home in their underwear and she had noticed how long and giraffe-like his legs were above those socks. She wanted to feel him slip inside her, wanted to see his eyes dilate even more and his breathing go ragged, wanted to rattle his cage a bit; was this really different than refusing to use a coaster, or putting one of his cereal boxes out of order? She wanted to see him unravel.
"Penny. Penny, no. Penny," he murmured back, insistent and touching her hand with his own. He did move up to be level with her, but he wasn't making any move to get naked. Instead, he stroked his fingertips over her bottom lip, just gazing at her face again, studying the features carefully. "No."
"Why not?" she said, aware that she was whining, that she sounded petulant. "Sheldon, I---"
"Because I'm led to believe that more than this would be what you'd call 'rushing it'," he said matter-of-factly. "Trust me, it's not for a lack of interest on my behalf, but I feel that it wouldn't be appropriate at this moment. You're insistent only because you're overcome with hormones at the moment. It'll pass in a few minutes." He hesitated, then sort of shifted against her. Penny realized with dawning amazement that he was actually trying to cuddle her. She paused, then relented; she understood where he was coming from, even though she disagreed wholeheartedly. Didn't he get it? She hadn't just thrown herself at him; she liked him, liked the challenge he presented her, liked that he made her feel like some kind of fierce battle warrior opponent when they verbally sparred, liked that he could be both endearing and adorable as well as sensitive and sympathetic when the mood struck him? Liked that he had just taken charge in the bedroom, something she would never have seen coming in a million years, and had made her come so hard she'd seen black holes and galaxies herself. She lay back, and Sheldon's arm tentatively draped across her from behind; it was awkward and not entirely romantic (she could feel the waffle-like pattern of the orange thermal against her bare back, and idly wondered if she should put on clothes before they dozed off) but neither of them moved.
After a moment, he went, "Huh."
"What?" she asked, beginning to sound a bit slurry with drowsiness. She was just so complacent here, in his arms. Clothing contrast be damned.
"You have stars on your ceiling," he noted.
"Mmhm. I painted them up there. Little glow in the dark ones," Penny said sleepily into her wrist.
"I didn't know you liked space," Sheldon mused. "Perhaps sometime I could take you to the university, you'd like the observatory. We have big telescopes... you can see a lot of stars from there."
"That'd be nice," she said softly, sincerely.
"Besides," Sheldon murmured as an afterthought against her ear, "if we fornicate now, there are too many variables that will interfere with my data on that experience. It'd be a skewed perspective, and my whole methodology would be flawed. As I've said before, I don't think I can take experiencing that failure more than once in a lifetime, and Wolowitz called dibs on it. Sorry, Penny."
She smiled against her pillowcase and breathed drowsily, "What's the next step in the experiment, then, Sheldon? Dinner date? A private Star Trek marathon, where you explain to me who they are? Taking me to a convention as the Catwoman to your Batman?"
"I could be Batman," he agreed thoughtfully, then grinned. She could hear the Cheshire in his voice. "No, none of those are the next step in a proper experiment, Penny. I can't deviate from the methodology or all the results are void. It'd just be complete hocus pocus on my end and a complete disservice to you if I skipped the final step."
"Then what is the final step?" Penny asked.
His fingers touched her shoulder and he rolled her over slightly so that she was on her back. His lips found hers and he kissed her softly for a moment, then breathed against her lips. "Well. You retest, of course."
It was the first time in as long as he could remember that Sheldon missed his eleven o' clock bedtime.
He missed it by a lot.
Author: Manda (so_pseudogoth)
Category: Oneshot, 1/1
Rating: NC-17 (Sheldon/Penny smut! Explicit! Not gratuitous though, I'd like to think I did it tastefully.)
Summary: This is a response to the plot bunny posted here by mrsvc about Sheldon losing a bet and having to go across the hall to seduce Penny. But what happens if Penny gets more than just an acting job out of the event?
Warnings: There is explicit Shenny smut in here, and a litttttttle bit of bad language (I think I cussed like once). There are a few spoilers in here, nothing much, just references to things and tiny little in-jokes, if you're fairly caught up with the current season you will be totally fine, I don't think I gave anything away.
Author's Note: This is my first BBT fic and obviously, first attempt at a Sheldon/Penny. Please enjoy. I ALWAYS love comments, criticisms, feedback, etc. :D And I am so excited to be a part of this community!!!
"I can't believe it," Leonard said, squinting through the thick lenses of his glasses at the notebook on the coffee table. The table was pathologically neat, their laptops sitting closed and quietly humming, everyone's drinks on coasters, just the way Sheldon insisted... and except for the incredulous, stunned look on one Dr. Sheldon Cooper's face, everything was exactly normal in Apartment 4A.
"Sheldon, you were wrong," Raj whispered in a reverent tone, turning his dark gaze to the insufferably smug Wolowitz. Howard was sitting back in his usual seat, arms folded over his chest, a self-satisfied grin on his mouth.
"But that isn't possible!" Sheldon squeaked, his voice breaking with emotional distress. "I've never been wrong about anything! Misguided, perhaps, but I remedied the situation before anyone caught on--- this is ridiculous. I don't even know how I should feel right now!" He hesitated, then looked at Leonard. "How is one supposed to act when proven wrong in such a blatantly inexcusable manner, Leonard?"
Leonard paused, then arched a brow. "Gee, I dunno. With some humility, perhaps."
"No, that'll never work," Sheldon dismissed, shaking his head a bit. He still looked crestfallen, and tapered fingers reached for the notebook and picked it up. Studied the equation written there. "I can't believe I missed it! It was such an obvious question!"
"No one can be perfect all the time, Sheldon," Leonard ventured, not exactly sure why he always felt the need to try and cheer up his roommate but doing it anyway. He knew that this feeling of failure was entirely new to his colleague; it was one variable Sheldon had never accounted for.
"Of course one can," Sheldon snapped irritably. "I was distracted, that's all. Raj was discussing the upcoming Watchmen movie and I was following that train of thought when I was trying to work out the equation, I should've been paying attention closer. I want a do-over." He made a face at Howard petulantly.
"There are no do-overs," Raj countered instantly. He was entirely too pleased and amazed at the knowledge of knowing that Sheldon was fallible after all; no way would he let this monumental moment slide.
Sheldon's jaw dropped in objection. "Why not?!"
"You realize what this means, Cooper," Howard said with a suggestive arch of his brow.
"Yes," Sheldon sighed. "That I have to concede defeat to the hands of an engineer. Oh, my mother would be so proud. If she knew what the difference between our statuses was, that is."
"Not only do you have to say 'You're the king, Wolowitz'," Howard informed him, leaning forward to pick up his can of Diet Coke, "but you have to do whatever I tell you to. It's called a 'dare' for a reason."
Sheldon eyed him warily. "I don't like the tone of this insinuation."
"And my dare is... you have to ask Penny out on a date."
"Excuse me?" Sheldon asked, taking a sip of his own cola.
"You heard me," Howard said, leaning back and folding his arms again.
"He can't do that," Leonard protested, shaking his head. Trying to plead Sheldon's case, though he wasn't entirely sure why; was he really that hung up on Penny still? It had been six months since her gentle rejection of him, and the stinging had subsided to a dull ache; he had Stephanie now, more or less, and Leslie Winkle if he wanted her, and they were both wonderful, but... he had to admit, neither of them quite got his proverbial motor going the way a pair of long tanned legs in Hello Kitty shorts and a bouncing blonde ponytail could.
"I can't do that," Sheldon echoed, nodding agreement.
"Why not?" Howard demanded. "It's my dare and that's what I dare you to do. No takebacks."
"For one, it's a more futile mission than the majority of Leslie Winkle's research," Sheldon said peevishly. "Which is quite saying something, isn't it? And for another, why does my punishment involve something that would be considered a reward if given to, say, Leonard?"
"Because Leonard didn't make the wager with me," Howard said firmly. "You can't go back on your word. You swore on Spock's honor."
Sheldon opened his mouth to protest again, then furrowed his brow. "Damn you for invoking the Nimoy Clause of our wagering by-laws," he said, smacking a closed fist into the opposite open palm. "Have you no shame?"
"Did you just ask Wolowitz if he had shame?" Leonard asked, lifting an incredulous brow.
"You're right, I see the error of my statement as clear as dihydrogen monoxide," Sheldon sighed. "Alright, Wolowitz. Outline the specifications of your so-called 'dare' for me. I want to ensure that I don't misinterpret what you're intending for me to do. Besides make a fool of myself, that is."
"Here's what you have to do," Howard said, leaning forward and waggling his brows.
- - -
"Penny."
Knockknockknock.
"Penny."
Knockknockknock.
"Pen---"
"Sheldon." She pulled the door open, arching a brow. He looked flustered and completely out of sorts, his hand poised in position to rap on her door again. He glanced down, then back up at her, eyes widened.
"Oh, I'm sorry, sweetie," she said, and pulled the door shut.
Sheldon exhaled, then knocked three times quickly. "Penny."
This time she opened it promptly on the third knock and smiled patiently. "You know, you've knocked more than three sets before I've answered before... that doesn't bother you?"
"No. Only when it's less than three. That's the number that is most---"
"Sheldon," she interrupted gently, holding up a hand and closing her eyes. "Ssh."
His mouth closed on cue, and he stood there.
Penny opened her eyes, giving herself a moment to take him in. If someone had told her back in Nebraska that when she moved to Pasadena she'd be sharing a living space, and her life, with the official So Cal Nerd Herd, she would've laughed. Not her, not drama-club-queen Penelope, with her honey-blonde hair and bright green eyes and gorgeous football playing boyfriends, with her decent grades and huge social circle. It wasn't that she was anti-nerd; she had always felt a twinge of sympathy and regret watching her string of handsome, rugged boyfriends grab the collars of skinny, acne-flecked boys with wide startled eyes, boys whose heads seemed destined for every toilet bowl they encountered between now and Bill Gates-level stardom. But she had never actively defended any of those victims in high school, and even at the community college she'd never raised a hand to venture answers; she'd let the nerdy kids handle it as she coasted through, half-dozing in the wake of her frequent hangovers.
But Leonard, Sheldon, Raj and even Wolowitz were different; they tugged at her heartstrings like small, geeky puppies, puppies that were perfectly adorable but had one ear that didn't stand up straight or had a kink in their tail or something. Some small imperfection, but it didn't make them any less precious in the big picture. They were needy, and affectionate, and loyal to faults, and they were so hopelessly hopeful that someone would someday take them home and love them just as they were. And for now, if that someone had to be Penny--- who would be able to teach them the basics of potty-training, socialization, and how to do a few tricks for the ladies--- then by god, she'd rise to the challenge.
Leonard, of course, was her favorite, because of his endearing crush on her, because of the fact that he had always treated her with respect, even idol-worship a few times. Raj was so harmless and sweet, and just once she hoped he would loosen his tongue without needing a few stiff drinks first; she had an idea there was a lot behind those dark eyes he was ready to say. Even Howard, who tended to be overbearing and sometimes downright pathetic with his attempts to impress the fairer sex, had his redeeming qualities, and she found herself equal parts disgusted and amused by his antics.
But Sheldon.
Sweet, clueless Sheldon. Sheldon who was so insufferably full of himself, so completely arrogant and stubborn that he would not be reasoned with unless you took to exploiting his few quirky weaknesses--- Sheldon who could somehow worm his way into your heart even as he insulted you to your face. Sheldon who wore neon orange thermal shirts (where did one even buy such atrocities?) under comic book t-shirts, who thought it was okay to wear clip-on ties, who refused to share any of his specially-labeled fiber-enhanced yogurt even when she'd run out of Yoplait and was craving it like crazy--- Sheldon was an altogether horse of a different color. The others, Penny had been able to pin down fairly quickly; they all just needed a good roll in the hay with a girl who had half a brain in her head and half an ounce of intuition between her thighs. But Sheldon didn't seem like sex would fix a damn thing inside his oversized head; he was so set in his ways, so blatantly asexual. He never batted an eye if she marched into their apartment in her skimpiest pajamas, only if she didn't use a coaster when putting her drink on the end table. He tuned her out when she whined about needing to get laid, but was all ears when she discussed a new quest she'd been propositioned for on Age of Conan.
Oh, Sheldon.
"Penny?"
His neurotic, slightly quavering voice took her out of her reverie, and she blinked, wondered how long she'd been standing there zoned out like a complete spaz. A little headshake, and she laughed. "Sorry, Shel. I totally spaced. What's up?"
"I believe the joke goes, 'the upper atmosphere'," Sheldon said primly. When Penny merely blinked at him, he explained meekly, "The sky."
"I see," she said, stifling a smile. "You made a joke. That's nice, should I write that down in case you deny it in the future?"
"I happen to have an excellent sense of humor," he sniffed, straightening himself to his full height. Penny tilted her head back to study him. How tall was he? Her guess put him somewhere around 6'4", but she couldn't be sure. Either way, he towered over her, and she didn't like to think about the fact that six days a month (when the chocolate cravings and the urge to eat the cheesecake she was serving to her tables overtook her), she probably outweighed him by a good ten pounds. "It isn't my fault that the vast majority of humanity can't appreciate the finer, subtler ways I choose to express it."
"Sheldon... are you going to tell me your purpose in coming over here, or should I just assume it was an excuse to try out your stand-up routine on me?" she asked dryly, arching a brow at him.
"No," he said, suddenly all business. "I am about to let you in on a secret that only four people in this world currently are aware of, myself included. I will require your full disclosure in this matter, and ask that you treat it with the ultimate discretion. If word got out about this... my entire reputation could be ruined. My Nobel Prize could be in jeopardy. Leslie Winkle would call me a dumbass again."
Penny blinked. "Wow, this is serious, isn't it?"
"As a pulmonary spasm. Now." He reached into his messenger bag to withdraw a sheaf of typed, double-spaced papers, neatly stapled together. "I'll need you to sign this and initial it twice, to ensure that you fully understand the code of discretion we're going with here."
She took the contract, then eyed the first few paragraphs, clearly skimming.
"I took into account that to you, swearing on the moral integrity of the inhabitants of the Enterprise might not have the same effect as it would to say, me, so I altered the contract to suit your own personal ethics perspective," he informed her.
Penny glanced up and smirked. "You want me to swear on my collection of Care Bears?"
He nodded, his face dead serious. He waited patiently while Penny shook her head, then scribbled something illegible on the signature line and initialed where he'd marked large Xs on the page. When she had finished, she handed it back to him, then said, "Can I know the secret now?"
Sheldon glanced over his shoulder furtively. "Not here," he mouthed in a stage whisper when he was facing her again. Penny lifted both brows, then looked past Sheldon. On the wall above their apartment door, where a sprinkler had once been mounted, she saw a blinking red light.
"Is that a webcam?" she asked quietly, her voice neutral.
"Wolowitz installed it specifically for this purpose," Sheldon murmured, trying to keep himself out of earshot of the camera. He faced Penny, a note of urgency in his voice. "He wants to see my epic failure. It will be, as he put it so eloquently, a lot like the most recent three Star Wars films."
"I see," Penny murmured. "So, um. What should we do?"
"I know this may seem unorthodox, and I hope it won't offend your sensibilities," Sheldon said anxiously, making a slightly pained expression, "but if you could, uh... if you could sort of pull me into your room and shut the door, I can explain further."
"What's wrong, you can't walk?" Penny asked, tilting her head.
"I can walk," Sheldon sniffed, flushing a bit. "I'd just appreciate it if you could, uh. Pull me. In. By my shirt."
Penny hesitated, then rolled her eyes. She was sure this was some ridiculous, amazing scheme the boys across the hall had concocted, though it surprised her that Sheldon should be the main enabler of the prank; normally he avoided awkward situations like the plague. Still, if she played along, maybe they could get this over with and she could go back to watching the "Snapped" marathon on Oxygen. That show never failed to get her pumped; she always wanted to call up ex-boyfriends to make them squirm.
One hand shot out and she grabbed Sheldon by his shirt collar. And, swear to God, he made a 'meep!' sound, caught off-guard by the effectiveness of the gesture; the petite blonde hauled him into her apartment and shoved the door shut, then released him. Sheldon made an indignant noise and set about straightening the layers of t-shirts he wore.
"My god, to think that's supposed to be arousing," he huffed. "It was like what I imagine being mauled by an angry tiger would be like."
"Wait, what?" Penny asked, blinking. "What's supposed to be arousing?"
Sheldon hesitated, then blushed. Penny'd never seen him in such a deep shade of red, except for his Flash t-shirt of course. It made him look all of twelve years old. A very tall, gangly twelve.
"The secret is... I challenged Wolowitz to a battle of wits. We were watching Jeopardy!, you see, and normally I don't engage in such mundane frivolities, the questions are supposed to be challenging but they're usually just child's play, but Leonard refused to change the channel. Wolowitz made an off-handed and ill-advised remark that I was threatened by the questions because they weren't specifically on theoretical physics--- can you imagine? He's an engineer, he has a master's degree, and he thought I was threatened by Alex Trebek's meager attempts to befuddle the general populace..."
"I get it, Sheldon. You and the guys were playing Jeopardy!. So then what?"
"We were writing down our answers for the final question, you know, to ensure that no one could cheat or change their answers, and... Wolowitz got it right."
"That's surprising," Penny said with an eyeroll, making sure to lay on the sarcasm thick so that maybe he'd pick up on it. "You guys are all super genuises. So Howard got it right. Big deal."
"...I did not."
Penny froze, then did a double-take. Sheldon was gazing at his knees, obviously quite ashamed of himself; his shoulders were slumped, his head down like an abused dog.
"Oh, sweetie," she began, shaking her head. She moved to slide an arm around his shoulders, but he moved precisely two inches away, just out of arm's reach without being outwardly offensive. "Right, no touching, sorry," she said. "Anyway. I'm sorry. Did Howard call you a dumbass?" she guessed.
"I should say not!" Sheldon sniffed self-righteously. "Jeopardy! be damned, my IQ runs laps around his and waves each time it passes by. No, the sad fact is, because Wolowitz challenged me, we were forced to make a wager... and since we weren't using actual money... we, uh... we did 'dares'. And I lost. So Howard made a wager that I should, uh. Come over here."
"That doesn't seem so weird. You guys come over here all the time. We might as well have tin cans on a string between our apartments," Penny laughed.
"Or something slightly less archaic," Sheldon smirked, "but I'll allow your exaggeration for the purpose of the conversation."
"Thanks," Penny murmured, rolling her eyes.
"Regardless. No. He dared me to come over here and uh..." Sheldon paused, clearly running through a mental thesaurus. "...and seduce you," he finally decided, using Wolowitz's exact wording.
Penny could feel her face drop, as well as her jaw.
"Oh, don't worry. I understand that it's completely against your code of ethics to have copulation with someone of my stature, and to be frank, I myself have little investment in the matter either. But I can't eat the proverbial crow in front of Wolowitz twice in one twenty-four period.. or one lifetime, while we're on the subject... so I would really appreciate it if you could play along on this and perhaps help me concoct a good story to tell them? I would, what's it called, owe you a favor?"
Penny glanced up, watching the absurdly hopeful expression on Sheldon's face. So eager to prove Howard wrong, to show that he was once again Dr. Sheldon Cooper, PhD, top dog in 4A. At any cost, even coming over here to ask Penny to lie for him and with him.
"You're such an awful liar, Sheldon," Penny said. "Howard's going to know you're lying. They all will. You won't be very credible.. They know me better than that."
"I anticipated their skepticism," Sheldon said instantly, unruffled. "I planned on telling them that you got completely inebriated and had intercourse with me as a way to get revenge at one of your ex-boyfriends. I jotted down a quick database of the most recent ones that I could remember, I think Mark could be a viable motivation for your vengeance-and-alcohol-fueled involvement with me. We could just tell them that you were drunk and didn't remember a thing."
"...you honestly think that they'll buy that I was drunk enough to sleep with you?" Penny asked before her brain could catch up to her mouth. She registered the momentarily stung expression on Sheldon's face, then blustered, "I mean, you know, I don't even drink much, and you're you, you're like a brother, you're like asexual!"
"While it's true," Sheldon began, a note of ice in his tone, "that I don't traditionally pursue the attentions of females-- and certainly not ones on a level of desirability as yourself--- I will have you know for the record that I am not asexual. I just find intercourse a distraction from my Nobel Prize."
"What do you call Halo, then?"
"Training for the zombie apocalypse," Sheldon said without missing a beat. "Honestly, Penny, sometimes I wonder."
They sat in quiet for a moment, and then Penny lifted her head. "Well maybe we could fake it pretty convincingly. I mean, you know, a few hickeys, mess your hair up, maybe pop a button off your khakis..."
"What?" Sheldon squeaked, looking over at her sharply. She had a wicked, creative grin on her face, warming to the idea as her theatrical side took over.
"Yeah, it could be great. We could make it look really good, you know. Howard would die, Sheldon. He would seriously like, keel over and die."
Sheldon was silent for a long beat, pondering, before he replied, "I suppose it's possible. Wolowitz would never suspect I could actually get anywhere with you, since he himself cannot."
"The only one of you who's tried with any kind of class is Leonard," Penny laughed. "And if I had slept with Leonard, all of you would've died in shock."
"Not particularly," Sheldon said mildly, shifting in his seat to straighten the pile of ex-boyfriend data he'd printed from his computer to show her.
"What? Really?"
"No. Leonard's probably the most desirable of our group, I suppose, if one were to apply a simplistic 'rating' system to us."
"What makes you think so?" Penny asked, intrigued. And more than a little weirded out at hearing Sheldon call Leonard 'desirable' in such a matter of fact tone.
"Well, for example. If a female was prone to men who are actually extremely romantic but have trouble expressing themselves, and have a mother complex... and don't mind dating an engineer who uses his master's degree to get into girls' pants... they would find a kindred spirit in Wolowitz. If she was into traditional, old-fashioned, introverted exotic men with a penchant for Dr. Who and late-series Star Trek, Koothrappali wouldn't disappoint. If she preferred humorous, accomodating, slightly-passive men who are surprisingly drawn to women despite their physical or mental shortcomings--- for example, you, and Leslie Winkle, neither of whom are exactly floating at the top of the IQ barrel--- then Leonard would be the ideal choice, I suppose. Of all of us, he's had the most luck in love, you realize. First you, which we all thought was sort of the Holy Grail if you will, and then Leslie Winkle--- you'll excuse me as I insert a shudder of revulsion here--- and now Stephanie. He's, as I said once before, a veritable mack daddy in our midst."
Penny smiled faintly. "And what about you? What would you have to offer a girl, Dr. Cooper?"
"Me?" he seemed surprised and a bit caught off-guard by the question, but gave a nervous little titter of a laugh. "Well. I can assure with 98.67% confidence that our offspring would be evolutionary light years ahead of their peers. I have a working knowledge of string theory that only fourteen other people on the planet possess, and seven of them aren't in this hemisphere. And I can cite issue numbers for any major story arc in a mainstream comic book published by either Marvel or DC from the 1960s to present day."
"Well, aren't you a catch," Penny drawled, grinning. "I'm sure there's a girl out there who'd just be knocked out of her socks about that, Sheldon."
"Oh, I don't know. I haven't met one yet. There was one girl at ComiCon once, she seemed mildly interested in me but I think it was mostly that I had impeccably rendered Spock cosplay going on. I have no interest in being someone's fetishized love slave. Especially as a Vulcan."
Penny laughed a little, then shook her head. "Oh... kay," she drew out, rolling her eyes. "Okay, come over here."
"Why?" His voice was so plaintive, questioning. Utterly innocent.
"Because I can't give you some hickeys if you're like five feet away from me."
"I thought about that," Sheldon said, "and I have a proposal. Do you have a vaccuum with attachments?" He cast a doleful eye around her hurricane-just-hit apartment, then murmured, "I'd like to think the answer is 'no', but I'm prone to believing this chaos is more due to laziness than lack of household cleaning instruments. Anyway, if you have a vaccuum with an attachable hose, I think that would create the desired effect. Perhaps a bit more circular than normal, but it isn't as though any of them are overly familiar with the aesthetic makeup of a 'hickey' anyway."
"Sheldon, I'm not going to vaccuum your neck! That's totally weird. Besides, I can give you one in like two seconds, I'm practically a professional. Who knows how long a hose could take?"
Sheldon hesitated, then grimaced. "It's so undignified. Not to mention unsanitary. If you were to bite me and break skin---" he shuddered drastically. "Well. The amount of bacteria in a human mouth is staggering, Penny, it really is."
"I won't break skin," she said with another exasperated eye roll. "Sheldon, I'm not freaking Edward Cullen here or something. I'm not going to drink your blood. It's just a few little hickeys. I can even do them on your shoulder or something if you want to be able to cover them at work."
"Who?" he asked.
"Nevermind," she said. "It doesn't surprise me that you haven't heard of Twilight, but trust me, you're not missing much there. Anyway, look, do you want this done right or not?"
"...I suppose," he said, shifting. If there was one thing Dr. Sheldon Cooper didn't do, it was something half-assed... and if he was going to go through with this farce to get the others off his back, he would have to put his inhibitions aside and just let Penny work her deceptive magic. "Just... try not to make me look too obscene, alright? I do work this week."
"Done," she said with a grin, quite pleased with herself. She wasn't sure why it should feel like such a triumph to give hickeys to Sheldon Cooper, of all the people in the world, but it did; she couldn't keep the cat-who-ate-the-canary smile off her glossed lips as she pointed to the couch beside herself. Sheldon hesitated, unsure. "Look, I know you're concerned about optimal air flow and cushion density and all that jazz, but for like two seconds, make this sacrifice for me. I'm doing you a huge favor," she reminded him, and he sighed, relinquishing his chosen seat in the wheely office chair to the couch cushion beside her. After bouncing slightly a time or two to test for springyness, he settled, and that was when Penny pounced.
In retrospect, perhaps she came on too strong; this was Sheldon, after all, who was afraid of cereal with low bran content. He didn't get blonde girls in Victoria's Secret tank tops and Seven jeans launching themselves at him very often, she would bet; but what the hell, right? Her lips found his throat, and her first thought was: soft. He had surprisingly soft skin, and smelled like soap, something clean and simple like Irish Spring. The guys she knew usually bathed in Axe or something before a date to try and make themselves smell appealing, but Sheldon had a very innocent odor, like childhood sort of. Like a guy who didn't exactly sweat much, who showered twice a day on a strictly timed schedule, and who ate a very balanced and quite nutritious diet most of the time (with the weekly springing for Asian cuisine, of course). In short, he smelled amazing. She kissed his neck softly to prime him, and almost laughed when she felt his muscles contract under her hands. Muscles. Really. They could be called that only in the most anatomical sense, because they were far from distinct in his body, but she could feel them tense. He was nervous, poor baby.
"It's just me, Sheldon," she murmured, trying to put him at ease.
He gave a high-pitched squawk of a laugh. "Oh yes. I'll keep that in mind. Nothing strange about that, no way."
She grazed her teeth against his throat, marveling at the definition of his slender neck. He was so thin, and she'd sort of expected him to feel fragile or mousy underneath her administrations, but that wasn't turning out to be the case at all. He was wiry, skinny yes, but there was some kind of strength potential in his lanky limbs, and she found herself surprisingly loving the feel of his collarbone against her nose. She bit down, unable to help herself from giving the tiniest little groan; it'd been awhile since she'd gotten any, and if she didn't think too hard about it being Sheldon... it was pretty nice to be in this situation again.
"Penny. Penny. Penny," he whispered with increasing urgency in his voice, and she pulled back, wiping shimmery pink gloss off his alabaster skin so that she could admire her handiwork. A nice red swatch was already livid against the skin, and would purple in just a few minutes.
"You okay?" she asked, pulling back enough to gaze into his eyes. They were so dark and completely bottomless; she couldn't see one inch into that brilliant brain of his. Her own were a clear, crystalline green; Sheldon held her gaze, his heart thudding, unnerved by his own reaction to her bite.
"Yes," he managed in a squeak.
"Good," she breathed. "One more, you think?"
"Two should be sufficient," he whispered a bit hoarsely. He lifted his chin, not breaking their eye contact.
"Other side?" she asked, moving her head to the right a bit, pushing her own loose curls off her shoulder.
"...I think this one should perhaps be less visible," he said, and they were both a bit taken aback by his boldness there. Penny paused, then smiled slightly.
"Your pick," she allowed, then reached up to tug on his t-shirt. He reluctantly lifted his arms a bit to let her raise the hem up, and when the comic book shirt was off, he remained in the orange thermal. His arms went down over his chest when she went to remove that one too. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," he murmured, glancing away at last. "Just... you can pull the collar off my shoulder a little. I don't need to take it off."
"Alright," she said, arching a brow. She'd thought Sheldon would be into taking his shirt off in front of her; Wolowitz would've been naked or sporting some kind of hideous leopard print man-kini thong affair by now, she was positive. But Sheldon seemed so shy, so painfully reserved.
Penny pulled at the soft cotton shirt until it moved a bit and she could see the hollow of his throat, the smooth white of his shoulder. Her breath caught. He had freckles there. She'd never really realized it, but she had a subconscious love for freckles, for their haphazard placement on pale skin, and Sheldon had just enough; a smattering of ginger-colored ones on his white shoulder and it was game over for her. She bowed her head to kiss them, and her hair tickled his chin and he let out a little shiver in response, and then Penny's palms were on his chest, sliding down, scrunching up a fistful of the waffled thermal material, pulling. Urgent. She bit him, but this time there was a lot more suckling involved, and his pulse accelerated to warp-speed in his veins. When she finished the love bite, she drew her head back slowly, and her tongue slipped out to touch the new mark; she licked his throat slowly, starting at his collarbone and working her way toward his jawline, and Sheldon was trembling under her hands when she finished.
They sat in silence, gazing at each other, both of them breathing quickly with nostrils slightly flared.
"How do they look?" Sheldon finally asked, his voice unsure and soft.
"...perfect," Penny whispered, her lips barely moving. "Sheldon?"
"Yes."
"...could I kiss you?"
"Why would you want to?" he asked, earnestly confused.
"...Does everything have to have an explanation?"
"Of course it does, Penny. I'm a scientist, we deal only in facts and reason."
"Alright. Here's a reason," she murmured, leaning in. "Because... you're different. Because you, in your weird, quirky, fucked-up little way, actually care about me and show that a lot. Because you don't have an agenda when it comes to someone else's heart, or your own. Because you're so innocent and---"
"Penny, I'm hardly innocent. For Pete's sake, I'm a level 84 mage, do you think I've made it that far without meeting a few wenches in my time?" Sheldon asked, raising his brows. Penny stared at him for a moment before she burst out laughing, and he allowed himself the rarest known experience on earth; Sheldon Cooper's lips twitched and then curled into a smile. It was not the ghastly caricature of one he had sported when pretending to be happy for Koothrappali's success; it was not the self-congratulatory smirk of condescension he saved for his lesser colleagues. No. It was a genuine smile, and it looked positively wonderful on his normally tense features.
So Penny kissed him.
To say that the kiss meant fireworks would be both inaccurate and a metaphor inexcusable to Sheldon, who would undoubtedly launch into a spiel about how the chemistry between two people could, in no universe, actually result in a combustible fusion, but Penny had only been kissed better by one other person in her long history of kisses. To Sheldon, it was the best kiss he could've ever envisioned, and he didn't spend much time thinking about such things; it was a revolution because every (well, almost every) single thought of string theory and algorithms and paradoxes flew from his tangled, convoluted mind and for a moment he found peace. For the first time since he had learned to read at the age of two (with developing comprehension, of course; it wasn't exactly Hawkings, but he could read the hell out of Dr. Seuss by three) his mind was calm and uncluttered; he wasn't worried about what side of the couch he was seated on, or the comfort level in the air temperature of the room, or working on some naggling little bit of his equation in a distant part of his brain. He wasn't reviewing Klingon in the back of his head (one had to keep brushed-up on foreign languages, they decayed in your mind if left unused for too long) or worrying about if they needed to buy more dishwashing liquid; there was only some strawberry lip gloss and the feel of a soft, surprisingly pleasant tongue on his teeth and the sound of a very soft, pleasure-laden little whimpery noise that escaped Penny's throat. Had he caused that? Scientific method of questioning called to logic that yes, he had; there was no other stimulus currently being visited upon the blonde, so the process of elimination led him to conclude that her source of pleasure was him. Interesting. He couldn't remember ever having inspired such a sound from someone else before; he decided to try for a repeat, just to be sure his conclusion was sound. In science, after all, one had to test a thousand times before they could be sure their hypothesis was 100% foolproof.
Sheldon reached up tentatively and his hands rested on Penny's sides. No. That felt odd. He slid them upwards slightly and felt the distinct ridges of her bra beneath the thin fabric of her camisole, and a warmth spread across his cheeks. South, his hands found the bell-curve of her hips and rested there, unsure of where else they should be; her arms were draped around his neck, fingers pressed into his back through his shirt, and he could hear her breathing sort of skipping along unevenly.
"Penny?" he whispered against her lips. "Penny. Penny."
"Yes," she huffed back, slightly impatient at having her half-starved kisses broken off for a conversation.
"Are you alright?"
"What? Yeah..."
"Your breathing. Its accelerated rate and the rapidness of your pulse led me to think that maybe you were having some kind of physiological reaction to what we were doing... you aren't going to faint, are you? I don't have any smelling salts with me, they're all across the hall."
"No... Sheldon, this is what happens..." she murmured, trying to catch her breath. "Haven't you ever made out before?"
"Is that what we're doing?" he asked with interest. "Hm. I'd heard the term, of course, but I wasn't sure it was exactly this."
"Well, it starts like this," she laughed softly, shaking her head and touching her forehead to his. "It usually keeps going. Without talking."
"Oh. You don't communicate as a predecessor to intimacy?"
"Not usually. And not... you know, like this. You're sort of, uh, killing the mood."
"I'm sorry," Sheldon said sincerely. "I wasn't aware." And he kissed her again.
- - -
It amazed her that someone so devastatingly brilliant could be so innocuous; he was a unicorn, the rarest untouched species she'd ever seen, and he was in her bedroom. Of course, it had nearly given him a coronary having to step across the dirty laundry strewn across the threshold, and for the first time she could remember Penny felt a pang of self-consciousness at her sloppy housekeeping skills and wished she'd done a better job of using her hamper this week. But once he got past the initial nervousness of being in a girl's private quarters, Sheldon seemed almost to transform. He was like a ferret, moving around the room touching things, not particularly rearranging them but just taking note of them. She flicked on the pink bedside lamp, bathing the room in soft mauve light, and then watched him. He had fluid, graceful movements, and his head sort of bobbed when he walked, like a bird.
Penny stood beside the bed and hooked her thumbs in the waistband of the small shorts she wore. Without pretense or even looking at him, she eased them down her thighs and stepped out of them, straightening up slowly. Sheldon had ceased poking at the toys on her dresser and was gazing at her with interest. His eyes began at the freefall tumble of golden wheat-blonde hair, the curve of her shoulders, the delicate lace of the pink silky camisole she wore... the slope of her stomach and hips, the sleek taut brown skin of her thighs and the muscled angle of her calves. Her feet, arched, pink toenail polish and a tiny silver ankle bracelet, a toe ring on her left foot. He lifted his gaze back to her face and saw that she was smiling slightly. Dressed in just the camisole and a pair of hip-hugger panties, Penny thought she would feel a bit more comfortable; she was often butt-naked by now, with the men she brought home--- not men. The boys. The boys who thought that expensive, flashy cars and cologne and designer shirts could make up for their lack of sensitivity or intellect. Guys who still gave swirlies or pantsed the geeks; the geeks much like the one who stood before her now, his expression soft and skittish in the muted lamplight. Sheldon would either come a step forward and kiss her again, or he would cut and run back to 4A now; either way, their entire dynamic had changed forever, and she knew that she could never again sneak into his bedroom to ask about Age of Conan. Not after tonight.
But she didn't regret it, and after a moment's deliberation, Sheldon took a step forward.
- - -
To be a scientist, one must constantly be learning, observing, expanding. One must take what one knows and apply it; one must never rule out possibilities until they are proven completely impossible.
As such, Sheldon found no plausible reason why he should not engage in intercourse with Penny. She was sober, she was beautiful, and for some reason even his advanced brain couldn't comprehend, she was interested and willing. And he liked it, liked the smooth feel of her skin beneath his palms, liked how she arched her back just slightly if he curled his fingers through her hair, and most of all, liked those tiny whimpering sounds he could coax from her every so often. He was a perfectionist and he liked to do things precisely; Penny gasped in surprised and disbelief when Sheldon's hand moved over the soft vulnerable stretch of her inner thigh, his lips against her collarbone.
"Penny."
"Yes." Only once that time; they were making progress already.
"Penny, could you take your shirt off?" he murmured, his cheeks flaming, his nose against her clavicle.
She smiled faintly and shifted on the mattress, tugging the hem up over her flat belly to bare herself to him. She wasn't sure why she would feel more naked under Sheldon's eyes than she did under Brian's or Mike's or Eric's; perhaps because she desperately wanted him to like what he saw.
"Sheldon?"
He glanced up at the sound of his own name, at the tone of her voice. Penny, insecure? But it was there, the faintest glimmer of uncertainty on her face, on those glittery lips and her clear green eyes and he twitched his lips again, the feeling alien but also somehow completely natural.
He was a scientist. He missed nothing.
His hands slid over her, fingers splayed; he marveled at the texture difference between, for example, the soft underside of her left breast and the pebbled hard-candy texture of her right nipple. He took his time distinguishing the variations between the fine downy blonde hairs on her forearm versus the waxed-smooth expanses of her thighs, and when Penny reached up, undoubtedly trying to take control--- she was, he remembered dully in the back of his brain, a big ol' five--- he surprised them both by catching her wrist in his fingers and pushing her hand away firmly.
"Ssh," he murmured, his voice low and barely above a whisper. His warm breath grazing her shoulder. "First thing you do in a new experiment... observing."
And he was. Penny got the feeling that Sheldon, for all his facetiousness and attention to detail, was memorizing her every inch, was committing every bit of this event to his brain for later perusal or replay. He was trained to take in every single thing he saw, touched, felt, thought, and no one was better at doing something perfectly than Dr. Sheldon Cooper, PhD.
His hands moved lower now, slow concentric circles across her abdomen and hipbone, and then they played at the hem of the lacy panties she wore. Unsure if he should proceed.
"What's the next step, Sheldon?" Penny whispered breathily, reclining her head into the pillows.
"What?" he whispered hoarsely.
"What's the next step in a new experiment?"
"...Define the question," he murmured, sliding his hand over her pelvic bone. She lifted her hips slightly in invitation, and then smiled slightly.
"Does that answer your question?" she sighed, turning her blushing cheek to the cool cotton of the pillowcase.
Sheldon wordlessly pulled off her panties; they slipped silently down her thighs, and he dropped them into the overflowing hamper on the side of her bed before returning his hands to their previous location.
"You're still dressed," she observed, inhaling as he skimmed the tips of carefully-clipped and manicured nails over her neatly-waxed bikini area.
"This experiment isn't about me, Penny," Sheldon breathed. "It never was."
She made a soft sound in response, then closed her eyes. "What's the next step?"
She felt him shift on the bed, and then warm breath touched her thigh. She drew in a sharp inhale and her lashes fluttered; his hands were incredibly patient as he moved them over her long legs, then gently drew them apart.
"Form a hypothesis... and perform experimentation. Collect data," he recited in that same quiet, considering voice. Thoughtful, even now.
Penny opened her eyes and gazed down the length of her torso. Sheldon was kneeling at the foot of the mattress, and she was surprised by how graceful he looked, not gangly at all. His short dark hair was slightly mussed, his eyes very round and wide, the pupils blown like a drug addict's. His lips parted, slightly shining from where he'd licked them in nervousness. His hands on her thighs, which were spread just slightly. Penny couldn't remember having been this aroused in a long time; even her jock lays couldn't get her this revved with anticipation, this quivering and helpless at their hands. She wanted to beg him to touch her, and so she did just that.
"Penny," he chided softly. "You can't rush science."
She opened her eyes again and saw that he was smiling. Somewhat mischievously, this time.
And then his head lowered.
Apparently Sheldon had formed his hypothesis.
The experiment, as they say, was a success. He had never done it before, of that Penny was positive, but she had no doubt that he was a very fast learner and excellent at deducing what was working and what wasn't. His tongue, which could deliver a brilliant lecture or cut someone's ego to ribbons in seconds, was good for something else as well, and he lashed it against her tirelessly, even as she cried out with increasing volume and frequency and her hands slid down to grip his close-cropped hair. She tried not to direct him too much, because he was finding things out for himself and doing a spot-on job of it, but every so often she'd nudge him one way or another and he'd instantly situate himself to find the angle she wanted. He was, in fact, damn near a perfect lover for this reason; he was doing his job impeccably. Collecting data and putting it to work almost the instant he figured it out. Within minutes, Penny was half-sobbing with pleasure, her back arching violently off the bed, amazing herself with the intensity of the orgasm that ripped through her. Sheldon drew back, brows arched, and before she had a second to recover he was moving his fingertips across his lips, studying them in the pale lavender light of her lamp, touching the tip of his tongue to his fingerprints.
She lay there, still slightly trembling with the lack of control, the sick-spiral of emotions inside her where she'd come. "Oh my god, Sheldon... that was incredible."
"The hypothesis was a good one, then," he surmised, chuckling, quite pleased with himself. "A success for us both."
"Let me..." Penny murmured, trying to pull him up so that he'd lay on top of her, wanting more, needing to complete the cycle. She wanted to see Sheldon's naked body as well, wanted to kiss his sharp hipbones and find out if the rumor was true about tall skinny guys, was being revisited by the memory of the day he and Leonard had come home in their underwear and she had noticed how long and giraffe-like his legs were above those socks. She wanted to feel him slip inside her, wanted to see his eyes dilate even more and his breathing go ragged, wanted to rattle his cage a bit; was this really different than refusing to use a coaster, or putting one of his cereal boxes out of order? She wanted to see him unravel.
"Penny. Penny, no. Penny," he murmured back, insistent and touching her hand with his own. He did move up to be level with her, but he wasn't making any move to get naked. Instead, he stroked his fingertips over her bottom lip, just gazing at her face again, studying the features carefully. "No."
"Why not?" she said, aware that she was whining, that she sounded petulant. "Sheldon, I---"
"Because I'm led to believe that more than this would be what you'd call 'rushing it'," he said matter-of-factly. "Trust me, it's not for a lack of interest on my behalf, but I feel that it wouldn't be appropriate at this moment. You're insistent only because you're overcome with hormones at the moment. It'll pass in a few minutes." He hesitated, then sort of shifted against her. Penny realized with dawning amazement that he was actually trying to cuddle her. She paused, then relented; she understood where he was coming from, even though she disagreed wholeheartedly. Didn't he get it? She hadn't just thrown herself at him; she liked him, liked the challenge he presented her, liked that he made her feel like some kind of fierce battle warrior opponent when they verbally sparred, liked that he could be both endearing and adorable as well as sensitive and sympathetic when the mood struck him? Liked that he had just taken charge in the bedroom, something she would never have seen coming in a million years, and had made her come so hard she'd seen black holes and galaxies herself. She lay back, and Sheldon's arm tentatively draped across her from behind; it was awkward and not entirely romantic (she could feel the waffle-like pattern of the orange thermal against her bare back, and idly wondered if she should put on clothes before they dozed off) but neither of them moved.
After a moment, he went, "Huh."
"What?" she asked, beginning to sound a bit slurry with drowsiness. She was just so complacent here, in his arms. Clothing contrast be damned.
"You have stars on your ceiling," he noted.
"Mmhm. I painted them up there. Little glow in the dark ones," Penny said sleepily into her wrist.
"I didn't know you liked space," Sheldon mused. "Perhaps sometime I could take you to the university, you'd like the observatory. We have big telescopes... you can see a lot of stars from there."
"That'd be nice," she said softly, sincerely.
"Besides," Sheldon murmured as an afterthought against her ear, "if we fornicate now, there are too many variables that will interfere with my data on that experience. It'd be a skewed perspective, and my whole methodology would be flawed. As I've said before, I don't think I can take experiencing that failure more than once in a lifetime, and Wolowitz called dibs on it. Sorry, Penny."
She smiled against her pillowcase and breathed drowsily, "What's the next step in the experiment, then, Sheldon? Dinner date? A private Star Trek marathon, where you explain to me who they are? Taking me to a convention as the Catwoman to your Batman?"
"I could be Batman," he agreed thoughtfully, then grinned. She could hear the Cheshire in his voice. "No, none of those are the next step in a proper experiment, Penny. I can't deviate from the methodology or all the results are void. It'd just be complete hocus pocus on my end and a complete disservice to you if I skipped the final step."
"Then what is the final step?" Penny asked.
His fingers touched her shoulder and he rolled her over slightly so that she was on her back. His lips found hers and he kissed her softly for a moment, then breathed against her lips. "Well. You retest, of course."
It was the first time in as long as he could remember that Sheldon missed his eleven o' clock bedtime.
He missed it by a lot.