Fic: Bittersweet and Strange (For She_Burns1)

[fujiidom]

Title: Bittersweet and Strange
Author: fujiidom/Maura
Rating: R for violence/death/kissing. (Yeah, IDEK.)
Word Count: ~9,200
Disclaimer: It's a rental.
Summary: she_burns1's prompt was for a semi-cracky retelling of Beauty and the Beast but with Sheldon/Penny.

A/N: The Holiday Swap has turned juniperlane into Batman and she saved me along with everyone else. Holy first-born child, I owe you. As for the story, just suspend your disbelief and know that this was done somewhat tongue-in-cheek, since the drama is heightened to crazy levels for effect, as any good Disney movie knows is key. The style this was written also jumps around, mostly on purpose, since I tried to melt the concept of a fairy tale down (somewhat literally) to become a bit more realistic over the course of the story. And as for the plot, just pretend like the apartment complex is ten stories (which is unverified, but likely untrue) and the guys have never met Penny because a year and a half earlier than planned (or achieved), Sheldon met his one of his idols, setting this AU into motion. Sorry it's a bit belated (it's still the 26th somewhere, right?) but this just kept getting longer and longer! I hope you enjoy it, regardless.


.

There’s a version of these events where she was just a waitress/actress who couldn’t catch a break, whether with a studio call-back or a fair dinner tip and he was a finicky theoretical physicist with a higher regard for Golden Age comic books than human interaction.

Over the course of a decade they become begrudging partners, confidantes, and friends with one another through a series of amusing coincidences and easily lovesick mutual friend.

This isn’t that story.

.

Once upon a time, in the not too distant land of Southern California, a young man lived in a fairly adequate apartment complex and cared only for the ingenious thoughts that raced through his brilliant mind.

He was selfish, withdrawn, and staid in the careful routine of his unkind life.

Until one day, a wise older man buzzed importantly up to 4A, in hopes of being let in from the unseasonably cool, wet weather outside. The young man knew much of the visitor and his countless works of brilliance in the scientific community. He had regarded him highly until their meeting last, when his dreams and esteem for the other man were dashed by an outright, callous brush off. Having proclaimed the man a prima donna of sorts, he was left with the sinking feeling of failure in the pit of his stomach, something unfamiliar and unwelcome to the younger man. He would never forget the feelings of inadequacy brought on by the exchange and subsequently resented the older man for years to come.

When the time arrived to revisit those nauseating moments of self-doubt and humiliation, he did not hesitate at the chance to avenge his past hurt and leave the call unanswered. He listened, one-sided, to the sound from the apartment’s intercom as the older man let out a few exasperated words of contempt and cleared his throat to speak.

“I’ve seen your work on number theory. A colleague of mine put it on my desk along with your somewhat misguided super symmetry research that you’d sent numerous times and I had unwisely disregarded until now. Now, well, suffice to say I think you’ve nearly solved the Riemann hypothesis, if inadvertently. I brought the notes you sent me and the corrections, to show you. If you don’t wish to speak to me, now, I shall wait until you decide it’s in your interest to change the course of mathematics and science, for eternity.”

He spoke with a sureness that made the younger man’s heart race. This scientist was beyond gifted. He would not be mistaken in his estimations and solving the Riemann hypothesis may not have been the work he had planned to gain recognition for, but it was a triumph of the heart and mind all the same.

He wanted to ask how he knew, what section of his notes the man had been given, when they could publish together and receive the glory and fame that had been the drive for much he had done throughout in his young life. But to ask any of these questions would mean he would need to click the intercom button and cut off the other man's words.

The young scientist found himself stuck in a conundrum as difficult as many that graced the surfaces of his white boards.

Once he uttered that last sentence, however, the older man merely bid him goodbye and the sound from the other end of the intercom fizzled out with his exit.

The young man pressed hard into the speaking button, calling out loudly, in hopes that his visitor would wait and allow him a moment’s time to rush down and speak with him. The older man was famously busy and finding time to approach him the last time had taken years of anticipation and calculation. There was no guarantee that the young man would be able to find him, right away, no matter how eager he might be to speak.

When there was no further answer, the young physicist couldn’t contain himself any further. Grabbing his keys from the bowl below where he stood, he pushed out of the apartment and raced down the stairs. He burst out of the lobby’s door. Not having bothered to reach for a jacket didn’t deter his path, the biting cold of the mild downpour outside merely an obstacle to the total validation of his professional career.

He squinted up at the blue-gray sky before wiping the water out of his eyes and frantically looking around for any sign of the other man. Not seeing anyone in the small parking lot, he set off down the street towards the small overhang where the bus stop and taxi cabs picked up guests.

Turning the corner, hoping to find his destiny, he instead saw a town car stopped crooked and unsafe, in the middle of the rain-soaked street.

Its hazard lights blinked ominously and his stomach had turned to lead before he even neared close enough to the scene to see that which was obstructed in the view from a half a block back.

There in the street, lay the old man. The car’s driver was hunched over his body and crying. They pleaded desperately with a stranger over the wavering connection on her cellular phone.

The blood leaking heavily from the his neck and side seemed to be a figment of the young man's imagination, as it was washed away before ever getting a chance to pool. It was a dark trick on his thoughts, making the injured man look as though he was slumbering rather than inches from death.

As he sunk to his knees, mouth agape and eyes bugged out, he mourned so much more than just the death of the fellow genius. He watched as the smeared and illegible photocopies from his cracked open briefcase slipped further down the street, along with the quickly moving streams of water, and through the grates of the nearby gutter.

George Smoot was not the only great mind lost on that cold, dark day.

.

She met him by accident. One that was not of her own making and another that was.

Her father had visited for the day, overwhelmed and skeptical of her dream of becoming an actress, he spent most of his time criticizing the busy streets of LA they’d driven down through most of their unnaturally warm day trip.

When they arrived home, she dove head first into her worn copy of Hamlet and continued her ongoing attempts to hone her craft.

She brushed off four text messages from her ex and current almost-stalker, Kurt. He informed her of how much he was currently benching at the gym and how much he wanted to press her, too, sometime soon. Her father snickered at her snide comments on how thick his neck was compared to how low his IQ must be.

He kicked up his feet and turned on some Discovery channel show about inventing things, or re-inventing things, or deinventing things. He watched so many, it was hard to keep track.

He was always fiddling with their lawn mowers and tractors, back home. He enjoyed the vicarious chance to experiment and create, she suspected, something that he had given up to provide for her family.

After the third episode in a row, he seemed a bit antsy to do something. Grabbing her keys, without asking, he left to go get the mail. That’s what she thought, at least.

As ten minutes passed and then another thirty after that, she started to worry that he had gone out for a drive in her car. The same car with the steadily lit engine light only scantily covered by a strip of electrical tape, which he would easily notice if he drove around for long enough an amount of time. This would lead to him either railing on her for not checking the engine as often as she should, as she was raised to, or him attempting to fix it himself. She couldn’t risk either.

She set her book down and descended the stairs quickly, hoping she was wrong. Making sure not to shut the lobby’s door and be locked out, with her keys still in her father’s pocket, somewhere, she poked her head out and saw her parked car just where she had left it. She frowned and checked around the ground floor, the laundry room, and even putting an ear to the long-dormant elevator, in case he had gotten any really crazy ideas. All were empty and silent.

She walked back upstairs, slowing her pace once she returned to her floor. The panic of her missing father finally starting to make her stomach turn; he was a bit of an eccentric, sure, but it wasn’t like him to just take off.

Just as she was about to walk back into her apartment, she heard a heated argument through the door of the apartment across the hall. She had met the man that lived there, once. When she first moved in, he had introduced himself and welcomed her to the building.

She had seen him in passing since then, but only long enough for him to stutter out a few awkward sentences about the weather or how nice she looked before he skittered up the stairs.

Now, she was wondering if she’d misjudged him from the start. She pressed an ear to the door and listened to the sound of two other voices she didn’t recognize doing most of the arguing. They were talking about an older man who was apparently upstairs somewhere and a delivered package and there couldn’t be an upstairs because their apartment was 4A and there was definitely a 5A, so what could that even mean?

Penny’s breath caught in her throat because whatever this was about, it was clearly to do with her father.

Without much forethought, she twisted the knob and barged right into the apartment. It was dark, except for a few candles, near the kitchen island. The two men looked ready to have a stroke at her unexpected entrance.

“Hello, beauty,” the shorter of the two crowed. Even though it sounded like a line, it came off as more unsure and scared than anything else.

“Where’s my father? I heard you talking about him. I can’t find him. Tell me where he is,” she ground out. Her eyes narrowed, hands fisted up and pressed against her waist. “Immediately.”

“He’s - Um.” The bowl-cut hair atop his head was ruffled as he put a palm to his forehead, roughly. He seemed to shudder, then, his eyes anywhere but at her heated gaze.

His silent friend bit his lip and pointed upwards. The shorter man yelped and berated his motion, but Penny was already off, chasing up the stairs and pounding on the door to 5A. When the tenant had no idea what she was talking about, she continued on to 5B and the two men trailed her nervously, keeping a flight of stairs between them as they moved upward. 7B wasn’t answering their door and Penny grew more and more frustrated that these two people clearly knew where her father was and yet wouldn’t just tell her.

Something about her attitude must have gotten to the still quiet Indian man. He was scolded and argued with as he did it, but he crossed the floor she was currently on and continued up the stairs. Penny watched him go for a moment before her gaze flicked to his small friend realizing that he didn’t want her to follow. She turned and ascended two steps at a time.

He was stopped at the entrance on the highest floor of the building and nodded when she reached out to open the door.

The room was covered in books, from floor to ceiling. Not the kind of collection that proved Penny envious, however. They were all about physics and math and theorems and zeta functions. She peered back to see both men had not moved from the spot at the top of the stairs, near the entrance.

She called out into the dimly lit room, wondering what her father could be doing up here when she had lived in the building for three years without even knowing the complex had this many stories.

“What are you doing in my apartment?” A tall, scruffy-looking man emerged from the hallway. He wasn’t nearly as big as Kurt, but he loomed over her nonetheless. “I don’t recall inviting you into my apartment.”

“My father,” she started, swallowing the lump in her throat. She was the one who was mad, here. Her father was the one missing or kidnapped or gone. “I’m looking for my father and they told me he was up here.”

He all but growled at the two in the doorway and she watched as they both attempted and failed to protest before skittering down the hall and out of sight.

“Your father brought up a package I had delivered, for whatever reason, and the spare part for my radiator that was contained therein. I told him that I was to wait for a super to install it, but he insisted he could aid me. If you wish to see him, I’m sure he’ll be finished shortly.”

Penny pushed past him and ignored the roar of dissent that he called out behind her.

“Dad? Dad, are you back here?”

“Penelope?” her father questioned from where he was kneeling in the creepy man’s bedroom, leaning over the radiator and pinching his lower back.

He shouldn’t have been a) kneeling like that without his back brace, b) trying to see in such a dimly lit room without his glasses, and c) attempting to fix a radiator in a stranger’s bedroom, in the first place. Penny frowned and gave him a pointed look that all but spoke it’s time to leave aloud.

“I’m almost finished. I just can’t get the old knob to twist off without my tools. You go, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

Her eyes protruded even further, if possible, and she tilted her head dangerously. “No, we both go. Now.”

“You’re leaving?” The other man called from the outside doorway, still standing in the darkness of the hall. “I postponed calling our building’s super because I was told your father could fix it. He’s off-duty by now.”

“So? Call him in the morning. Come on, Dad, let’s go.”

“No!” His ashen face showed some color for the first time since she’d entered the building and he looked between them both. “I can hardly go to bed in the freezing cold. So unless you have a second spare place to sleep, I am in need of your father’s services before you deign it time for you to up and disappear.”

“Too damn bad.” Penny reached down and helped her father stand up. He seemed willing to stay, but she knew that he was already stretching himself thin. He wasn’t fit to be doing that kind of work, at all.

“That’s unacceptable.” The man and her father both stared at her, she glanced back and forth between them and tried to think of a way out of this. The part in her father’s hand was just a simple twist-on knob. She was a bit confused at how this grown man couldn’t just do it for himself. He certainly seemed able and with a living room stacked to the brim with books, he was at least pretty damn well read.

She thought about it for another few seconds and grabbed the knob, dropping to her knees. “Dad, go back downstairs. I’ll just do it.”

“I’ll wait with you, then.” Penny eyed the man in the doorway and considered her options. Staying back alone probably wasn’t the brightest of ideas, since he seemed slightly unhinged, but it certainly beat making her father stand around any longer with his arthritis and back aching all over. She sighed. “What?”

“Just go, I’ll be fine,” she replied, softly. She slipped her hand underneath the radiator and felt around for the release valve her father had mentioned being stuck.

Her father started to protest again, but the other man led him to the door and pushed him out long enough to shut it behind them. With that, Penny was left in silence to work.

Not more than five minutes later, she heard someone slam the front door and the rustling of paper against plastic bags. She had managed to get the knob loosened, but without a wrench or a set of pliers, she was mostly just sitting and wiggling it until it would deem it time to pop off on its own. She wondered if her father had somehow attempted to re-enter the apartment and wiped her hands on her jeans as she got up to make sure that wasn’t the case.

“And the good hot mustard from the Korean grocery?”

“Yes, Sheldon,” her neighbor said, the one that had been missing from apartment she’d burst into earlier. Leonard, she thought his name was. Like the old guy from Star Trek.

They both looked up as she entered the room, surprised at the movement for different reasons.

“Is it fixed?” Sheldon, as he was apparently called, asked.

“Is what fixed?” Leonard questioned them both.

“No, the knob won’t twist without a proper set of pliers or a wrench or something. I’m just loosening it more. It’ll take another twenty minutes, maybe less.” Her expression remained impassive, since she was still deciding on whether to be outraged or just disturbed by the current situation.

Leonard grimaced and crossed his arms. “You can go back to your apartment, Penny. I’ll take care of it.”

As ridiculous as it was, considering how against it she was just a second ago, her mind somehow interpreted that as a challenge. Like he was telling her that she should leave it up to the professionals. Please. “It’s fine. I’m almost done. I was just checking to make sure you weren’t my dad barreling in the door. He was kind of against the idea of me helping Sheldon out.”

Sheldon’s eyes rolled back and forth as their conversation went on, his posture frozen in the same position it had been since Leonard had started in on his line of questions.

“Well,” he finally spoke up. “Since you’re here, you will eat dinner with us.”

“It’s okay. My dad and I will probably just have some pasta, later. I’m not that - ”

“That wasn’t a request. Leonard, divvy up the side orders and prepare her a plate.” The shorter man flinched and gave Penny a look that she couldn’t help but glare back at. He might as well have let out a childish told you so.

She awkwardly took a seat on the opposite end of the couch, facing the small coffee table he was already preparing to eat at.

She sat and waited for her meal to be ready and couldn’t bite her tongue any longer. “I have to ask, what’s going on, here? Are you two living together? Dating?”

“We’re not dating and we don’t live together. Not anymore,” Leonard commented, quietly.

She looked over at Sheldon, who seemed to be off somewhere else. His eyes slightly glazed and off to the left of where his head was tilted.

Something hit her then; she realized that this really wasn’t a normal situation, at all. There was clearly a much longer, more complicated story to why Sheldon was so odd and his friends’ apartment was lit only by candlelight and he hadn’t spoken more than a dozen or so sentences since her walking in the door.

Something wasn’t right.

As if reading her thoughts, Leonard placed the plate in front of her and held her gaze for a long moment. She blinked and turned down, waiting for someone to continue the conversation.

Later, once the part was fixed and she’d gone back to her apartment for long enough to cook her dad a quick dinner, she let herself wonder what dreadful message Leonard was trying to convey. As much as she wanted to put that experience in the past, she couldn’t help but be oddly intrigued by it all.

When her father fell asleep on the couch and Hamlet wasn’t holding her attention like it was, before, she wandered back upstairs and knocked on the door to Sheldon’s apartment.

He didn’t answer, but for whatever reason, the door remained unlocked. She pushed it in slowly and slipped inside. The room was engulfed in darkness, the only light coming from the small crack under the bedroom she had spent most of the night in.

She neared it, slowly, and knew she should probably have announced herself as not to scare him, but she couldn't help the curiosity of seeing him without his guard up that swelled up inside. She held the doorknob tightly and moved it slow enough that it didn’t make a sound as it twisted right.

His back was turned and the room was a bit warmer than it had been earlier, now that the heat was working. There was a massive white dry-erase board propped against the wall and he sat staring, only inches from its surface.

His arm reached out to add a notation to one of the numerous equations scribbled across the length of it, but before he could finish the sign, he scrubbed it off and grabbed the side of his head, roughly. His hand grasped the short hairs of his head and pulled so that his neck lurched to the side, what looked to be rather painfully. There were a few more aborted attempts at adjusting the symbol before he leaned back and let out a groan of agony.

She turned back, the intrusion such an intense invasion of his privacy that it was making her feel sick, but before she could leave she noticed something that had escaped her sights, even having been in the room earlier on. A small picture of Sheldon, Leonard, and the two other men she’d met that afternoon, wearing camouflage jumpsuits and holding what looked to be paintball guns.

Sheldon wasn’t quite smiling, but he certainly looked about twenty pounds heavier and healthier than he was now. He stood tall and confident, with short, carefully trimmed hair and his eyes wrinkled slightly with emotion. She stumbled, caught off guard by the vast difference between the picture and the man rocking back and forth on his haunches, against the side of his bed and on the ground in front of her.

Just as she glanced back at him, however, the door swung in closer. As she turned to leave, she bumped right into its edge, lost her balance, and kicked it back as she attempted to steady herself. Sheldon reeled around and she braced herself on the dresser to her left, toppling over the picture in the process.

She managed to catch it, at the very least, but an enraged Sheldon was soon yanking it from her grasp and grasping it closely to him. “WHY DID YOU COME HERE? WHAT ARE YOU - YOU CAN’T BE HERE!”

Penny’s mind couldn’t even manage a decent excuse for revisiting, short of being fascinated by his haunted looks during dinner and Leonard not spilling the beans with more than a look. Some actress she was. “I’m - I - I’m sorry. Please, stop. I’m sorry.”

She backed out into the hallway and took off through the living room, stopping into her apartment for long enough to grab a jacket and her keys. She needed a long walk to think about what had just happened and her father was a light sleeper. There was no way she could wrap her brain around repeating back the scene she’d just witnessed so soon. She could barely make sense of it all, on her own.

Halfway down, she realized it was probably still downcast outside and she had neither a hood on her jacket or an umbrella. With the sound of a second set of footsteps coming downward from above her, she didn’t want to risk running into whoever it was on the way back upstairs.

Sure enough, the heat of the day had broken with the skies opening up to allow a light rain shower from above. Penny hugged her arms around her tightly and prepared to block out the discomfort that the drips of rain down her neck and face caused her. It was better than the alternative.

What she had gathered from the recent events was that she was right in her assumption that there was more going on here than she’d originally thought. Sheldon was once a functional human being with hobbies, albeit odd ones, and friends that didn’t run away to avoid prolonged eye contact with him.

Did this mean that something had happened to make him retreat into his mind, locking himself away in a new apartment? Depending on Leonard for food, money, and check-ups? She couldn’t be sure why he’d bother, if the behavior she’d just seen was any indicator of his normal temperament.

If Leonard’s apartment was lit by candles, before, he must be pinching every spare cent to make ends meet. And for what? So a possible schizophrenic could go untreated and pitch fits in the penthouse apartment? Run him bone dry of savings while he alienated everyone close to him?

She crossed the street, still lost deep in thought and somehow missed the fact that there was even traffic at the late hour it was. A dark blue hatchback screeched and swerved in front of her, the rain distorting her vision only long enough for her to catch an eyeful of the headlights before she was pushed - or slammed, really - into the pavement on the road’s shoulder.

Sheldon laid half on top of her and panted heavily as he rolled onto his side. The car’s driver parked and rolled down her window. “Are you okay?”

Penny nodded, words still escaping her. She gave another worried look before Penny sat up fully and gave a half-hearted smile. After a gentle wave of assurance, the car’s windshield wipers started back to life and it pulled into the road.

Sheldon favored his right arm, some and winced as she reached out to see it closer. The rain made everything seem a little hazy. He had left the building without a jacket, as well, and the skin of his wrist and elbow were rubbed red after the fall. The gravel of the street was sprinkled lightly in the small cuts.

She glanced down up to see him staring at her intently from where he was lain on the ground, his eyes more focused than she’d seen them since having met him. She blinked a few times and let her vision adjust. She could soon differentiate between what were drops of rain and what were his tears.

She had to remind herself that she’d only known him for a day because there seemed to be nothing unnatural about leaning a palm to his cheek and pretending to wipe his face dry. With them both still being pelted with rain, his eyes closed more at the gesture rather than for any actual good it did.

She pulled his arm delicately onto her lap and let him meld himself onto her side as he took deep calming breaths of air. At first she was sure he was just scared that she had almost been hit and he’d just barely escaped being grazed as well. Though, the longer he sobbed into her already sopping wet shoulder, it seemed that like most things about Sheldon, there was more to it than that.

.

Once she’d thanked him for saving her life and cleaned his wound out, following his specific instructions for properly disinfecting the wound, things unraveled like most things do: quickly and without warning.

Leonard explained the accident, the problem, the struggle with his mind and his body. He spoke of Sheldon having toiled over acceptance of being marginally responsible for a man’s death due to his research and at the same time plagued with the knowledge that the work in question was only a few scant notations away from being proven right.

He second guessed everything, trusted nothing, and refused to let anyone else near his boards for fear that they’d end up dead, too. Their near accident, earlier, certainly didn’t help negate that suspicion.

This time, however, he managed to save her. He had narrowly avoided falling deeper into his head and withdrawing from other people altogether.

But there was an upside, Leonard assured her (and Howard and Raj, she would later find their names to be). He had looked into the face of the monster that had been tearing apart his soul and overpowered it, the second time around.

He thought that perhaps meeting someone new, that he didn’t already know before the accident, might help him open up to the world. Maybe with some human contact and a new source of support, he wouldn’t be left to lead this cursed existence anymore.

Penny’s thoughts varied during that meeting, while Sheldon lay asleep from exhaustion six floors above their heads. At times, it seemed that Leonard was partly just relieved to see Sheldon interact with someone who wasn’t himself or a scared-to-death Raj and Howard. Later, however, he seemed so genuinely moved at the idea of Sheldon coming back out of the shell he had curled up into that she was almost in tears, herself.

And so after she drove her dad to the airport and explained everything that had gone on while he slept barefoot on her couch, she grinned during the entire trip back home.

She paused for just a minute before letting herself into the apartment across from her own. She was going to ask Leonard when they planned on bringing dinner upstairs, but was greeted with a brightened room full of people, lit up by something other than daylight for the first time in months.

“Enchanté, Cherie,” Howard crowed and tipped his head at her entrance.

Raj gave a small smile, still unable to speak in her presence. Leonard had a tight smile on his face and nodded excitedly at the sight of Sheldon sitting on a chair to his left.

His arm was still heavily bandaged, but he seemed content enough to only complain about his spot on the couch being missed. “Maybe we can bring it down, later? So next time, I won’t have to suffer this inadequacy.”

Just like that, she was part of his new routine. She couldn’t have grinned any wider.

.

Things screeched to an unexpected halt, on a cool November day. She had to miss dinner due to an unexpected schedule change at work and Sheldon hadn’t taken it too well. Things had progressed into a small argument over the fact that she didn’t need to schedule her life specifically around him, even if he was her friend.

Somehow, in the melodramatic and still oversensitive brain of Sheldon Cooper, this equated to her valuing their friendship less than he did. So, it only made sense that she wouldn’t be allowed to attend any future dinners; if she didn’t care about missing one then she shouldn’t mind missing them all. She had a bad habit of calling bluffs, but had forgotten that he was nearly as stubborn and competitive as she was.

So, if she didn’t want to eat with them all the time, she couldn’t eat with them any of the time. She had attempted reasoning with Leonard and the guys, but they seemed pigeon-holed by the fight. Sure, they sided with Penny, but they couldn’t exactly block Sheldon out of their lives. They were all he had.

Penny ate dinner alone for a week. She hadn’t had many friends since throwing herself into helping Sheldon get reacquainted to life outside of his own mind, but it had never occurred to her as much as it did after her fight with her pig-headed neighbor. She knew them and her coworkers and the dozen or so other actresses that fit the same casting call requirements that she did. Half were at work when she wasn’t and the other half were more likely to step over her cold, dead body for an audition than go out for Chinese food with her. Not the stuff of easily made dinner plans.

Eventually she cracked and called Kurt. She’d like to say she was drunk or recovering from a recent blow to the head, at the fact that she’d stooped to calling him, but she was neither.

She was lonely and angry and upset with herself more than anything else. A reminder of how stupid she used to be was only logical.

Or completely illogical. She didn’t really care and Kurt was heading to pick her up for a date within ten minutes of texting, so.

They made it through most of dinner without incident, but then he mistakenly tried that you love me more than anyone, come on shtick that she’d hated even when she did kind of stupidly love him more than anyone. Her mind started to wander after that and the next thing she knew, she was crying in the middle of a crowded restaurant with a half-eaten piece of steak in front of her and Kurt looking like she’d grown a second head, or something.

She asked if they could leave early and even though he looked incredibly annoyed at the prospect, he agreed. She never left a steak unfinished, so he knew from experience that this was a serious situation.

“Look, Pen, I know you miss me. I missed you, too, but - ” Kurt started once they had paid and left for the car.

“No, this isn’t - I didn’t miss you, Kurt.”

He frowned. “You didn’t?”

“Not really, no. This isn’t about that.” Penny wiped at her eyes and hoped the traffic wasn’t heavy because sitting in the car with Kurt for a prolonged amount of time was not on the top of the list of things she wanted to do that night.

“What’s it about then? Was the food not okay?”

She sighed and palmed the side of her face, in remembrance of what it was like to deal with this on a daily basis. She really didn’t know what she had been thinking earlier, but this wasn’t good at all. He was possessive and stupid and probably still lying about taking creatine supplements.

Realizing that she was in love with Sheldon during the second course was just the kicker. Her frown deepened as she watched the lights of downtown Pasadena flicker by.

“The food was great. I’m just - I shouldn’t have called you. I think I gave you the wrong idea.”

“Wrong idea? What do you mean? Does this mean we’re not actually back together?” Kurt ran a red light and swerved down the side street, nearing their apartment complex sooner than she expected. At least she’d be in familiar territory.

“No, we’re not. Not at all. I’m sorry if you thought that’s what this was about. I’m - there’s this guy, who lives here,” she started, taking a second to try and phrase things so that Kurt would understand just how out of his league the whole situation had become. His car idled in the parking lot and he turned to look at her. “He went through Hell last year and has a lot of issues, like so much that his issues have issues. Apparently he’s always been particular, but a few years ago - well, he had a really bad experience and now he’s finally coming out of his shell. He’s just about moved back into his old place, instead of staying holed up in the penthouse like a total nutcase. We were talking about trying to get his job back at the university in town. He needs me, is what it is. He can’t say it, because even though I think that he kind of likes me back, that’s not his style. So he flipped out when I missed dinner this week and I let him and I walked right into it and argued back.”

Kurt just stared back at her, eyes crinkled a bit with confusion. “Why are you telling me this, Pen? I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“I know,” she replied, feeling about as dumb as Kurt for the moment. “I just - I think I’m in love with him. I never - I think I’ve been in love with him for a while, now, but I just didn’t consider that a possibility since I care about him so much and he’s so damaged. I don’t even know what it’ll mean, that I am, but I can’t go out with you and pretend to enjoy it. I’m sorry, this is over. Permanently.”

Kurt balked, shook his head and gripped his steeling wheel tightly in disbelief. Penny opened the passenger’s door and let herself out, as he lit a cigarette and turned up the volume on his stereo.

She didn’t look back.

.

Sheldon was alone in his bedroom. He had made a massive mistake, disinviting Penny to their daily dinners. It just hurt so badly that she could get up and walk away, without so much as a few days notice. Obviously she didn’t need to plan her schedule around him and he wasn’t asking for that.

He had merely put himself in a place of extreme vulnerability and never in his lifetime had he felt this reliant on anyone to feel good. Even his other friends, though they were always a source of support and comfort in his numerous times of need, didn’t make him feel as normal when he was around them.

Normalcy, or some small semblance of it, was something he’d thought to have lost the day the answers to his problems washed away along with his estranged hero’s blood and life force. Sure, even before that experience, he was still troubled with problems and a myriad of idiosyncrasies, but he didn’t feel like a ghost. When he was around Penny, he felt like his old self. He had something worth reaching out for and someone that was willing to help him do so.

The complicatedness of it all made his head and chest ache. He stared at his white board in a daze, letting the marker roll around his forefinger and flip in a small circle between his knuckles. After a moment’s consideration, he nearly smiled. This was the first time he could remember losing track of his thoughts over something completely disparate from the equation he stared at, having haunted his conscious since that day, years ago.

Somewhat ominously, the buzzer on his apartment’s intercom sounded. He shook off the jolt of fear that raced down his spine.

He gave a short, “Hello,” and pressed the listen button to hear who could be buzzing his apartment at this time of night. All of his friends lived in this building and had keys to not just the lobby, but his apartment, as well.

“Hi. Is this Sheldon Cooper?”

“Dr. Sheldon Cooper, actually. But, yes.”

“Penny’s friend?” The voice asked, gruffly.

“I do know Penny. What is this in regards to?”

“We need to talk.”

Sheldon paused. He didn’t know this person at all, so the odds that he would have something worth talking about were hard to postulate. Also, he didn’t really enjoy meeting strangers.

But the last time he ignored a buzz was a constant weight on his mind. He bit his lip and hesitated only another few seconds before agreeing and holding down the unlock button.

.

Leonard had a basket full of laundry in one hand and was doing a terrible job of balancing it in addition to the detergent grasped in the other. There was next to no way he would be able to get to his keys, let alone turn the knob. He knocked on the door to his apartment with the heel of his shoe and waited for Howard and Raj to come let him in.

Once the door had been pulled inward, he let out a deep breath and dropped the heavy plastic onto the ground in front of the entryway. He turned to shut the door and was met with the image of what looked to be a fairly successful bodybuilder ascending their stairs. His eyes couldn’t help from bugging out, just a bit.

The man paused and returned the stare, he awkwardly continued to move forward before turning back with a scowl at Leonard’s steady gaze.

“Hi, sorry. I just didn’t know we had new tenants, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Leonard.”

“I’m not a new tenant, I’m just visiting.”

“Oh, are you here for Alicia, upstairs?” Leonard gave a knowing smirk.

“No. My buddy Sheldon, he lives in the penthouse.”

Leonard blanched. Howard and Raj approached him from behind the door, where they had been listening to most of the conversation. “How do you know Sheldon?”

Kurt wasn’t very bright, but he did seem to understand that the question was leading for a reason. He glanced over at the apartment across from them, 4B. From what he could remember, that was Penny’s apartment. He turned back to see all three eyeing him suspiciously.

He smiled.

.

Sheldon answered the door and was punched square in the face. He stumbled backward, holding the side of his jaw and feeling the throbbing from the area of impact down to the tips of his toes. He sustained another few punches before he attempted to fight back, but while he landed a few blows, the damage wasn’t nearly as crippling when inflicted in reverse.

He kicked and screamed, crawling his way towards his bedroom. There was an unused can of mace in there, somewhere. He needed it and to get as far away as was possible, from the alcohol-breathed tower of anger and muscle looming over him.

He was nearly at the crux of his bedroom’s door, when he heard a squeal from what had to be Penny echo through his living room. He wanted to tell her to leave and get as far from here as possible, but he worried that saying so would end with Penny doing just the opposite of what he wanted. Like always.

From the sound of her shouting, she wouldn’t have disappointed him. Instead, he croaked out her name in warning, hoping that she would at least stay far away from the behemoth of a man wailing with both fists at every inch of his body he could find.

“GUESS YOU’RE NOT THE ONLY ONE WITH ISSUES, HUH? What do you say, Pen? Does this make you love me, too? HUH? DOES IT?” Kurt yelled over her sobs.

Sheldon had heard her cry on a few different occasions. Usually to do with commercials about small animals without safe homes or movies with especially sentimental themes or endings, but this crying was nothing like those times. She was screaming syllables and half-words in between hiccups and wheezes. Sheldon felt his eyes water, too.

It was strange, crying over someone that was crying over you. It was a strange loop of emotions that he’d certainly never been a party to before that moment. It was as though he could feel Penny’s emotions as though they were his very own and even though he was being beaten senseless, it hurt more to consider how she must feel at seeing this than it did to take the hits to the face. Or it hurt nearly the same. Kurt had a strong right hook.

Something inside him snapped and a small burst of fight surged through him. Enough for him to kick Kurt’s shins and bump backwards long enough to grope around under his bed for the can of mace.

His hand connected with the shoebox he was looking for and he just barely managed to uncap it to spray before Kurt knocked it from his hand. Not before taking a shot to the side of his face, however. He groaned and cursed, gripping his face in pain.

Sheldon attempted to rise to his feet before he was kicked back down, Kurt’s good eye focused directly on him. Before Sheldon could catch his breath and attempt to get up, again, Penny came running into the room and launched herself on Kurt’s back.

She clawed and scraped across the front of his face, her arms choked around his thick neck, frantically trying to get him to topple over. He didn’t give and instead flipped Penny in front of him onto the bed. She tumbled down off the side and next to Sheldon. She still appeared to be crying, but her eyes were mostly dry, as though she’d run out of tears.

Sheldon stole up every ounce of anger he’d ever felt for the things he’d done and gone through, and the forever unsolvable problem on the abandoned white board leaning against the wall, behind them. He slugged Kurt once, twice, and a third time. Penny took that time to roll over and reach for the forgotten mace. She leaped up and let loose a full spray at Kurt’s face.

He screamed loudly and stumbled out of the room, into the dark hallway. Sheldon looked over and winced as he smiled at Penny; she reached out and gently pulled his hand into her own. Just as he tightened the grip and squeezed, about to ask what Kurt had meant before and why he had come here in the first place, they heard dark laughter bubble up from the living room.

“SO MANY BOOKS. Is this how you stole her from me, genius? ALL THESE STUPID BOOKS?!”

They both looked up in time to watch, through the narrow hallway, as Kurt bumped around, almost blind, and picked up a random volume. He pulled the BIC from his pocket and set fire to the side, waiting as the blue flames licked up the side. He tossed it casually back onto one of the massive stacks and laughed maniacally as he slurred a few more sentences about why he was a better choice, but between the alcohol and the mace in his eyes, he was barely putting coherent sentences together.

What started as a small fire almost immediately jumped from stack to stack, engulfing the living room in flames. Penny looked around and realized they didn’t even have a way of contacting the police, her phone back in her apartment and Sheldon’s handset amidst the fire. She could only assume that Kurt had stumbled out and down the stairs, but couldn’t find it in her to care if he’d been swallowed up by the fire.

She spared one more glance at the wall of flames separating their only exit from where they lay and kicked the door shut with her foot. The silence in the room was deafening. It was easy to pretend that the living room wasn’t ablaze and things might somehow end up okay. She gingerly helped him sit up, some, the bruises on his arms and chest still fresh.

She kept it together for a long moment, before a sob escaped from deep down in her chest. “I’m so sorry, Sheldon. I knew he was bad, but I never meant for this -” Penny was cut off by a wet hiccup and pulled back as much of her bottom lip as could fit behind her teeth. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Sheldon searched for what he wanted to say, since there was so much. Especially considering this could be the last time he saw her, if the fire outside got to them or he slipped into a coma from the head trauma. Both seemed terrifyingly likely and he was so incredibly mad at himself for having wasted their time together not saying everything he’d meant to.

“You came back.” He knew it hardly encompassed all the other good she’d done, all the help she’d been over the past few months, but it was the first thing to come to mind. When she knew he was in danger, she cared. That he had hoped for her to return his feelings through dinner arrangements seemed so ludicrous in the face of this similarity. He sighed and smiled through the pain coursing all over his body. “You came back to me.”

“Always,” Penny hiccupped, reaching a hand to stroke the few parts of his face didn’t sting at her touch. She looked back over her shoulder for a second, before adding, “Even if that only means a little while longer.”

He pulled her hand from the side of his face and cradled it against his bruised chest, lacing his fingers with hers. Penny's mouth hung open a bit in shock at his willingness to touch her and how every nerve in her body felt alight with dread and warmth at the same time.

She ground her teeth together, trying to keep the words from slipping out but quickly lost control when he tightened his grip around her palm. The sound of sirens from below was like music to her ears, but the threat of the fire was still very real and his hand burned just as strongly in her grasp. “I’m scared,” she croaked, immediately embarrassed but still unable to control what she was doing or saying. She seemed to be operating at a level of fear and instinct that overrode almost any say her mind had in the matter.

“Don’t be,” Sheldon squeaked out. He was clearly strained by his own pain and terror, along with his infamous lack of talent in this area of expertise. As if on cue, he reached his free hand out and patted her shoulder, awkward and tense. “There, there.”

“You,” Penny responded, a genuine smile somehow making its way across her tear-soaked features. “I love you. So much.”

Sheldon looked off to the left, seeming perplexed by the concept. As his gaze returned, however, his eyes were wet with tears of his own. “Me, too. I love you, that is. A great deal. Although that’s not to say you don’t love me equally, I wouldn’t really know that, but I can assume -” he was cut short as Penny crushed her mouth onto his. The sting of his swelled lips seemed trivial as she moved her mouth around, eventually goading him with her tongue to deepen the kiss.

He was so caught up in the sensation of Penny’s mouth moving in tandem with his own and the pleasant loss of feeling in his previously aching extremities that Sheldon didn’t notice the sound of knocking on his bedroom door.

A tall, redheaded firefighter flipped up the front of the uniform’s visor and cleared her throat. “Sorry to interrupt,” she called out and smiled as the two jumped apart, startled by the intrusion. “We’ve got the area locked down. You should be alright to leave.”

They both let out cries of joy and helped one another get to their feet.

“You might want to get those bruises looked at. There’s a few EMTs down in the lobby, with the police. You’re lucky your friends acted fast; we contained the fire almost as soon as we got here. Almost no structural damage at all actually, besides some floor burns.”

“Thank you. I don’t really know what more to say, but thank you,” Penny shook her hand and led Sheldon down the hallway, his arm around her shoulders as he limped slightly, in step with her.

When they finally made their way to the bottom floor, they were subjected to a ton of bandaging, as well as several verbal and eye response tests, to be sure the contusions on Sheldon’s head didn’t cause any lasting damage.

Worst of all, they had to listen to Wolowitz milk his black eye for all it was worth, to try and get in good with the female firefighter. To say she was merely out of his league would be the understatement of the millennia.

By the time they were finished, Sheldon was a bit loopy from the sedatives and excessive amounts of adrenaline that had been racing around his bloodstream for the better part of an hour. The paramedic tried to convince him to come in and get his arm x-rayed, but both Sheldon and Penny could barely stand up straight, let alone stomach a trip to the hospital.

Penny brushed off their suggestions, since they admitted that in all likelihood most of the wounds were superficial. The bruises would heal and he hadn’t broken any bones. As they waited for Howard to finish his final attempts at wooing, Sheldon surprised her by capturing her body in a tight embrace.

He leaned heavily against her and curved his posture so that he could rest his chin on her shoulder. “I’m sorry if this hurts, but I’m quite exhausted and I needed a moment to just lean somewhere that isn’t covered in soot or stranger’s handprints.” She looked over to see where one of the police officers who had stayed behind stood legs crossed and a hand outstretched to brace his stance, along the side of the lobby’s wall.

Penny curled her arms up his back and massaged his shoulder blades gently. She smiled as she felt him go somewhat limper against her body, before realizing his weight and straightening a bit. “You sure you don’t want to go see a doctor?”

“I want… to go upstairs and lay down in soft, warm bed. I want to… sleep for a longer than normal amount of time, to recuperate. I want… to stay here and dance with you.”

She pulled back and gave him a long hard look of confusion. “What?”

“I know. I’m not even sure, why, but I want to,” Sheldon explained, vaguely. Then he pulled her back between his long arms’ grasp and slid his left hand down to capture her palm. He gave a few jolty movements back and forth that she supposed could be interpreted as swaying. At her look, he frowned. “I don’t dance.”

“Obviously,” she observed, wryly. He shook his head and let his neck crane down to fall against her shoulder again, moving them to-and-fro at a strange, irregular pace. Penny smiled. “You don’t dance, but you’re… what is it that you’re doing?”

“We’re dancing,” he answered, flatly. “I don’t dance. But. If we dance together that doesn’t count.”

She waited a long moment and still squinted at his words. “I think that’s the drugs talking, Sheldon.”

“Dance with me, Penny?”

She sighed at the oddly desperate tone of his voice and set the rhythm as they moved slowly back and forth. His posture was still stiffer than it should’ve been and his neck started to make her shoulder a bit sore, but she continued moving until they stilled at the sound of Howard and Raj having a whisper and shouting fight over who had predicted they’d end up together first.

Sheldon breathed a long sigh into her hair. “This is nice, isn’t it?”

Penny agreed, “It is.”

“Let’s do this again sometime, okay?”

She grinned. Drugs or no, she liked the way he thought. “Sounds like a plan.”

.

Halfway through his and Penny's first dance as a married couple, Sheldon solved the Riemann hypothesis.

He scribbled it on a napkin and stuffed it in his tuxedo jacket pocket, as he had more important things to attend to at the time.

They spend their honeymoon in Sweden.