The Migraine Metamorphosis
A companion piece to Defcon One
Penny is barely through the threshold of 4A when she sees Leonard rush out the door with a quick, “Bye-Sheldon-is-in-his-room-with-a-migraine-see-you-later!”
He is gone before Penny can react. When she does, she takes his shoe that he’d left behind, walks calmly to the window, opens it, and throws it at his retreating curly head, shouting, “You rat bastard!”
Breathing heavily with waning anger, she can hear Sheldon’s weak voice, “Penny?”
Sighing, she follows his voice to his room, goes in without knocking, because really, he’d called her, and stops in her tracks when she sees his white face peeking out from under the covers.
“Oh, sweetie,” Penny begins to fuss. She walks over to his window to pull the blinds all the way down, and shut the drapes, and then sits down gingerly beside him. She touches his shoulder and he winces, “It’s that bad this time, hunh?”
Sheldon just closes his eyes, and his voice is so quiet, Penny has to strain to hear him, “I need my migraine medication. The Aleve is…”
Penny gets up from is bed as gently as she can, but he still winces again, “…in the bathroom. I’ll go get it.”
She knows, just knows without even looking in their medicine cabinet, that the bottles would be sorted alphabetically. At least Aleve is first. Penny brings it to him after stopping in the kitchen for a bottle of water.
Penny sits softly on his bed beside him again, and puts her hand gently under Sheldon’s head and neck to raise him up so he can swallow the pills. She shakes two from the bottle into his hand, so that Penny doesn’t touch them. He takes the pills and water, and she puts his head down again.
“Sheldon, honey,” she touches his forehead with the back of her hand, and can see a line of sweat dotting his hairline, “you need to cool down so you can sleep.”
Penny begins to fold down his comforter even as he weakly protests with a small whining sound. She manages to get it folded to his feet. “You should probably take your pyjama top off too,”
Penny moves up the bed to touch a button on his chest, but he stops her hand, “I’m cooler already.” He clutches the sheet to him.
She grins at his insistence to wear his flannels in August, and sits beside him again, “Do you want…” Penny uses her fore- and index fingers to trace lightly over his forehead, just above his brows and he flinches at first, but accepts her touch.
Sheldon’s eyes are dark in his pale face, and the look he gives Penny is unmistakable, but he still says, “Please.”
Penny quietly sings him to sleep after four rounds of “Soft Kitty,” each round getting quieter as she goes. She gets up to leave, tiptoeing out of his room once she’s certain he’s asleep, and the Aleve has started working.
x
Penny spends two hours watching, sound off with the captioning on, a Lifetime movie about J.K. Rowling, and the credits are rolling when she hears Sheldon groaning in his room. She switches off the television and gets up to check on him, quietly walking into his room.
Sheldon is no longer in his prone sleeping position, but is curled up, with his knees nearly touching his chin.
“Sheldon? What’s the matter?” Penny moves over to his bed and touches his shoulder again. The pain medication shouldn’t have worn off yet.
“I feel nauseated,” he whines quietly.
She sighs with empathy, and rolls him slowly onto his back. Penny can see now the sweat trickling down Sheldon’s forehead, even on to his cheeks, and, “tsks” at him while she begins to unbutton his pyjama top. He must sense that this is the right course of action, because he doesn’t protest or move to stop her.
Penny folds his top, so not to freak him out while he feels so bad, and leaves it on the folded blanket at his feet, “Have you had anything to eat today?”
He’s tucking himself back under his sheet, “No.”
“Migraine pills are pretty strong on an empty stomach, Sheldon,” Penny scolds, and takes a tissue from the box beside his bed to mop the sweat on his face, “What is it today? Oatmeal day? I could probably try to make you some.”
Sheldon’s wrist comes from under his sheet and grabs hers; obviously his instinct is to stop her from wiping his face with the tissue, but his grip loosens to hold her wrist with less restraint. She drops her hand, but he hasn’t let go, “I don’t think I could eat that, Penny.”
Penny laughs lightly as she moves out of his fingers, “You think I’d screw it up that badly? I can manage oatmeal, Sheldon.” She turns and flips the balled up tissue towards his wastebasket and misses.
Sheldon does a weak imitation of his normal level of irritation to her, which is really just a slightly raised eyebrow, so she moves off the bed to put the tissue in the basket with an over-exaggerated movement. He is sick after all, so she’ll let it go.
“It’s not that I don’t think you can make oatmeal,” Sheldon’s eyes are closed, but he continues, “I just don’t think I can eat it right now.”
Penny’s eye shift from mirth to concern, “You have to eat something.” She sits back on his bed, and strokes his forehead again, which he doesn’t object to, “Try and get some more rest, and I’ll see about getting you some soup before it’s time to take more medication.”
“Penny, will you…” Sheldon begins, eyes still closed, but the tone of his voice gives his request away.
She is still gently stroking his forehead, when Penny leans down a little, and softly sings “Soft Kitty” next to his ear twice, until she hears Sheldon sigh with something like contentedness.
Penny leaves his room, determined to track down Leonard and give him hell for leaving his friend like this. Raj’s or Howard’s?
She tries Howard’s first. Score.
x
The soup arrives, and she tips the delivery guy well, out of Leonard’s wallet. Penny is just about to take their soup to Sheldon’s room, when she detours to the microwave instead, as he’ll only ask her to reheat it anyway.
She reheats her own as well, and heads to his room to see if he’s awake.
He is, barely, but he opens an eye when he smells soup, “Is that from Soup Plant…”
“Yes Sheldon,” Penny sets out the soup and plastic spoons on his nightstand table.
“Creamy Toma…”
“Yes Sheldon,” she stirs their soup in the containers, and gets the napkins out.
“Reheated to…”
“Yes Sheldon,” Penny goes through the routine with him, but not irritated with him too much. Sick Sheldon is such a baby. Penny is more sympathetic to him today, however. Migraines are a bitch.
She helps him fluff his pillows to support his head and neck and tucks a napkin under his chin and into his white t-shirt. Penny tucks a napkin too, because her light pink camisole cost a little too much to ruin with her Potato and Leek soup. She sits on the edge of his bed, by his folded comforter, facing him.
Penny begins to slurp. Sheldon barely has the energy to chastise her, so he only gives her a long look, and then he simply continues to, quietly, eat his soup.
She points her spoon at the bottle of Aleve on his other nightstand table, “You can have another dose once you finish your soup.”
He nods, more with his eyes than his head, and they finished their soup in silence. Penny takes their containers, and he fishes two Aleve out of the bottle, drinks from his warm water, and nestles down into his pillows.
She comes back to his room after depositing the containers in the garbage, and sits by his shoulder again, “Do you feel any better, sweetie?” Penny helps him with his pillows again, and tucks the sheet around his chest.
“A little. Thanks for the soup, it helped I think.”
Penny laughs a little, “Thank Leonard, he footed the bill.”
Sheldon closes his eyes again, “I will if he ever comes home.”
“He’ll be back tomorrow morning, before I have to go to work,” Penny puts the back of her hand on his forehead again, and he feels cooler now.
He opens an eye, “You’ll stay?”
“I’ll stay,” she agrees.
Sheldon opens both eyes this time, and quietly says, “Thank you Penny.”
It’s rare when Sheldon is vulnerable and sincere, and Penny gives in to a rush of empathy and bends down to kiss his forehead. His eyes are closed again, and she moves to kiss his eyelid, but he moves his head and her lips land on his.
Penny opens her mouth, an apology on her lips. In fact, she gets out the “I’m…” before his lips meet hers on the “m.”
It’s a chaste kiss, but a kiss nonetheless, and Penny feels instantly guilty for it. He’s sick, drugged and reliant on her to take care of him. And all she can think is: he has really soft lips.
Penny gives herself a little mental slap, and moves away from him. She waits for the freak out, but his eyes are still closed, and he looks calm.
She is still sitting on his bed, so she lightly touches his bare arm that is poking out of his sheets, “You should get some more rest,” Penny says quietly, and gets up to leave.
One of Sheldon’s eyes opens, “You’ll be back to…check on me?”
Penny is standing at the door, “I’m not going anywhere, sweetie.” She shuts his door a little, and then goes into the living room to have the freak out that Sheldon didn’t have.
She kissed Sheldon. Sheldon kissed her. It’s all a little blurry, but Penny is pretty sure that when he feels better, strikes will be involved.
x
Penny has just shut her door after arriving home after her shift, when Sheldon starts his knocking. She waits him out, and then opens the door. Sheldon is there, looking much as he always does, with a carton of ice cream in his hands.
“Been reading Cathy again?” Penny smiles as he thrusts the carton towards her.
“I believe it’s customary to give a gift when one is indebted to another.” He enters her apartment and closes the door.
“You aren’t indebted to me Sheldon,” Penny says, but looking at the double chocolate brownie ice cream in her hands, she’s hardly going to argue the point. She puts it in her freezer, and turns back to him.
Penny takes a breath, and pushes ahead with what she needs to say, “Sheldon, I just wanted to apologize about…”
Sheldon looks confused, “About?”
“The kissing!” Penny’s voice is one octave away from a shout, and then she thinks and says, “Oh god, you don’t remember do you?”
Sheldon tilts his head, “Of course I remember. I had a migraine, not amnesia.”
“And you’re not mad?”
“No. In fact, my ulterior motive for visiting you was to…try it again?”
Penny’s eyes feel like they are bugging out of her head, they can’t be, right? All she can think of to say is, “Wh-huh?” She shakes her head and tries again, “You want to kiss me?”
“Yes. Provided you brush your teeth first, of course.”
Penny can think of dozens of reasons why this is a bad idea. Dozens.
She shrugs, and goes to brush her teeth.
End.
Penny is barely through the threshold of 4A when she sees Leonard rush out the door with a quick, “Bye-Sheldon-is-in-his-room-with-a-migraine-see-you-later!”
He is gone before Penny can react. When she does, she takes his shoe that he’d left behind, walks calmly to the window, opens it, and throws it at his retreating curly head, shouting, “You rat bastard!”
Breathing heavily with waning anger, she can hear Sheldon’s weak voice, “Penny?”
Sighing, she follows his voice to his room, goes in without knocking, because really, he’d called her, and stops in her tracks when she sees his white face peeking out from under the covers.
“Oh, sweetie,” Penny begins to fuss. She walks over to his window to pull the blinds all the way down, and shut the drapes, and then sits down gingerly beside him. She touches his shoulder and he winces, “It’s that bad this time, hunh?”
Sheldon just closes his eyes, and his voice is so quiet, Penny has to strain to hear him, “I need my migraine medication. The Aleve is…”
Penny gets up from is bed as gently as she can, but he still winces again, “…in the bathroom. I’ll go get it.”
She knows, just knows without even looking in their medicine cabinet, that the bottles would be sorted alphabetically. At least Aleve is first. Penny brings it to him after stopping in the kitchen for a bottle of water.
Penny sits softly on his bed beside him again, and puts her hand gently under Sheldon’s head and neck to raise him up so he can swallow the pills. She shakes two from the bottle into his hand, so that Penny doesn’t touch them. He takes the pills and water, and she puts his head down again.
“Sheldon, honey,” she touches his forehead with the back of her hand, and can see a line of sweat dotting his hairline, “you need to cool down so you can sleep.”
Penny begins to fold down his comforter even as he weakly protests with a small whining sound. She manages to get it folded to his feet. “You should probably take your pyjama top off too,”
Penny moves up the bed to touch a button on his chest, but he stops her hand, “I’m cooler already.” He clutches the sheet to him.
She grins at his insistence to wear his flannels in August, and sits beside him again, “Do you want…” Penny uses her fore- and index fingers to trace lightly over his forehead, just above his brows and he flinches at first, but accepts her touch.
Sheldon’s eyes are dark in his pale face, and the look he gives Penny is unmistakable, but he still says, “Please.”
Penny quietly sings him to sleep after four rounds of “Soft Kitty,” each round getting quieter as she goes. She gets up to leave, tiptoeing out of his room once she’s certain he’s asleep, and the Aleve has started working.
x
Penny spends two hours watching, sound off with the captioning on, a Lifetime movie about J.K. Rowling, and the credits are rolling when she hears Sheldon groaning in his room. She switches off the television and gets up to check on him, quietly walking into his room.
Sheldon is no longer in his prone sleeping position, but is curled up, with his knees nearly touching his chin.
“Sheldon? What’s the matter?” Penny moves over to his bed and touches his shoulder again. The pain medication shouldn’t have worn off yet.
“I feel nauseated,” he whines quietly.
She sighs with empathy, and rolls him slowly onto his back. Penny can see now the sweat trickling down Sheldon’s forehead, even on to his cheeks, and, “tsks” at him while she begins to unbutton his pyjama top. He must sense that this is the right course of action, because he doesn’t protest or move to stop her.
Penny folds his top, so not to freak him out while he feels so bad, and leaves it on the folded blanket at his feet, “Have you had anything to eat today?”
He’s tucking himself back under his sheet, “No.”
“Migraine pills are pretty strong on an empty stomach, Sheldon,” Penny scolds, and takes a tissue from the box beside his bed to mop the sweat on his face, “What is it today? Oatmeal day? I could probably try to make you some.”
Sheldon’s wrist comes from under his sheet and grabs hers; obviously his instinct is to stop her from wiping his face with the tissue, but his grip loosens to hold her wrist with less restraint. She drops her hand, but he hasn’t let go, “I don’t think I could eat that, Penny.”
Penny laughs lightly as she moves out of his fingers, “You think I’d screw it up that badly? I can manage oatmeal, Sheldon.” She turns and flips the balled up tissue towards his wastebasket and misses.
Sheldon does a weak imitation of his normal level of irritation to her, which is really just a slightly raised eyebrow, so she moves off the bed to put the tissue in the basket with an over-exaggerated movement. He is sick after all, so she’ll let it go.
“It’s not that I don’t think you can make oatmeal,” Sheldon’s eyes are closed, but he continues, “I just don’t think I can eat it right now.”
Penny’s eye shift from mirth to concern, “You have to eat something.” She sits back on his bed, and strokes his forehead again, which he doesn’t object to, “Try and get some more rest, and I’ll see about getting you some soup before it’s time to take more medication.”
“Penny, will you…” Sheldon begins, eyes still closed, but the tone of his voice gives his request away.
She is still gently stroking his forehead, when Penny leans down a little, and softly sings “Soft Kitty” next to his ear twice, until she hears Sheldon sigh with something like contentedness.
Penny leaves his room, determined to track down Leonard and give him hell for leaving his friend like this. Raj’s or Howard’s?
She tries Howard’s first. Score.
x
The soup arrives, and she tips the delivery guy well, out of Leonard’s wallet. Penny is just about to take their soup to Sheldon’s room, when she detours to the microwave instead, as he’ll only ask her to reheat it anyway.
She reheats her own as well, and heads to his room to see if he’s awake.
He is, barely, but he opens an eye when he smells soup, “Is that from Soup Plant…”
“Yes Sheldon,” Penny sets out the soup and plastic spoons on his nightstand table.
“Creamy Toma…”
“Yes Sheldon,” she stirs their soup in the containers, and gets the napkins out.
“Reheated to…”
“Yes Sheldon,” Penny goes through the routine with him, but not irritated with him too much. Sick Sheldon is such a baby. Penny is more sympathetic to him today, however. Migraines are a bitch.
She helps him fluff his pillows to support his head and neck and tucks a napkin under his chin and into his white t-shirt. Penny tucks a napkin too, because her light pink camisole cost a little too much to ruin with her Potato and Leek soup. She sits on the edge of his bed, by his folded comforter, facing him.
Penny begins to slurp. Sheldon barely has the energy to chastise her, so he only gives her a long look, and then he simply continues to, quietly, eat his soup.
She points her spoon at the bottle of Aleve on his other nightstand table, “You can have another dose once you finish your soup.”
He nods, more with his eyes than his head, and they finished their soup in silence. Penny takes their containers, and he fishes two Aleve out of the bottle, drinks from his warm water, and nestles down into his pillows.
She comes back to his room after depositing the containers in the garbage, and sits by his shoulder again, “Do you feel any better, sweetie?” Penny helps him with his pillows again, and tucks the sheet around his chest.
“A little. Thanks for the soup, it helped I think.”
Penny laughs a little, “Thank Leonard, he footed the bill.”
Sheldon closes his eyes again, “I will if he ever comes home.”
“He’ll be back tomorrow morning, before I have to go to work,” Penny puts the back of her hand on his forehead again, and he feels cooler now.
He opens an eye, “You’ll stay?”
“I’ll stay,” she agrees.
Sheldon opens both eyes this time, and quietly says, “Thank you Penny.”
It’s rare when Sheldon is vulnerable and sincere, and Penny gives in to a rush of empathy and bends down to kiss his forehead. His eyes are closed again, and she moves to kiss his eyelid, but he moves his head and her lips land on his.
Penny opens her mouth, an apology on her lips. In fact, she gets out the “I’m…” before his lips meet hers on the “m.”
It’s a chaste kiss, but a kiss nonetheless, and Penny feels instantly guilty for it. He’s sick, drugged and reliant on her to take care of him. And all she can think is: he has really soft lips.
Penny gives herself a little mental slap, and moves away from him. She waits for the freak out, but his eyes are still closed, and he looks calm.
She is still sitting on his bed, so she lightly touches his bare arm that is poking out of his sheets, “You should get some more rest,” Penny says quietly, and gets up to leave.
One of Sheldon’s eyes opens, “You’ll be back to…check on me?”
Penny is standing at the door, “I’m not going anywhere, sweetie.” She shuts his door a little, and then goes into the living room to have the freak out that Sheldon didn’t have.
She kissed Sheldon. Sheldon kissed her. It’s all a little blurry, but Penny is pretty sure that when he feels better, strikes will be involved.
x
Penny has just shut her door after arriving home after her shift, when Sheldon starts his knocking. She waits him out, and then opens the door. Sheldon is there, looking much as he always does, with a carton of ice cream in his hands.
“Been reading Cathy again?” Penny smiles as he thrusts the carton towards her.
“I believe it’s customary to give a gift when one is indebted to another.” He enters her apartment and closes the door.
“You aren’t indebted to me Sheldon,” Penny says, but looking at the double chocolate brownie ice cream in her hands, she’s hardly going to argue the point. She puts it in her freezer, and turns back to him.
Penny takes a breath, and pushes ahead with what she needs to say, “Sheldon, I just wanted to apologize about…”
Sheldon looks confused, “About?”
“The kissing!” Penny’s voice is one octave away from a shout, and then she thinks and says, “Oh god, you don’t remember do you?”
Sheldon tilts his head, “Of course I remember. I had a migraine, not amnesia.”
“And you’re not mad?”
“No. In fact, my ulterior motive for visiting you was to…try it again?”
Penny’s eyes feel like they are bugging out of her head, they can’t be, right? All she can think of to say is, “Wh-huh?” She shakes her head and tries again, “You want to kiss me?”
“Yes. Provided you brush your teeth first, of course.”
Penny can think of dozens of reasons why this is a bad idea. Dozens.
She shrugs, and goes to brush her teeth.
End.