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Part 1: Penny Wearing Heels
"Sheldon!" Penny cried out dramatically as she threw open the door to apartment 4A – ok, overly dramatically, but one of these times she was going to manage to surprise him into jumping and spilling what was in his hand, or running a jagged line across his whiteboard in shock – to find him staring at her mildly.
"Is there any particular reason you're interrupting my Stargate Universe marathon?" he asked, turning his attention back to the television.
"I'm about to go out on the town with my friends," she told him, standing in the doorway. "And I'm wearing new shoes."
"You know girl-talk flummoxes me more than idle chit-chat. It is a level of torment I thought I had left behind with my sister in Texas."
"Girl talk?" Penny echoed incredulously. "No. Remember that new Blister Block Stick I loaned you a few weeks ago? You said you'd return it after studying the ingredients to determine whether you wanted to buy your own."
"Yes, I remember," he responded off-handed.
Penny stared at him meaningfully. "Well?"
"It's composed mostly of hydrogenated vegetable oil." He looked at her. "Shortening. Combined with cetyl alcohol, the effect offers both lubrication and protection that I believe could offer a sufficient shield against blisters and chafing. I could easily create you a life supply for under $10 compared to the $5.39 you paid for what amounts to mostly the application apparatus."
"Sheldon," Penny said with barely veiled impatience. "Where is it?"
"My room."
"Could you get it?"
"I could," he affirmed, not moving.
"Sheldon? Seriously?"
He looked from her face, probably trying to analyse the annoyed expression flicking across her features, then down to her shoes, then back up to her face. Other men would be taking in the expanse of leg between the shoes and the silk skirt she was wearing, or at least lingered at her plunging neckline, but Sheldon wasn't checking her out, he was just putting together the pieces of the conversation up to this point.
"Oh."
Penny rolled her eyes as he got to his feet. For a genius, he wasn't too bright sometimes. Geez. He really didn't get the subtly of conversations, and she knew this about him, so why did she keep assuming he'd be able to have any kind of chat with her? Maybe because sometimes he was actually able to? She wasn't sure if he just had 'on' days, if it had to do with his level of concentration, or if it was certain topics of conversation. She'd never been able to figure out a pattern.
He handed the tube to her without comment, his eyes focused on her shoes again. "Those are impractical."
"Yep," Penny said, popping her P and staring up him with a grin. "That's the point. Thanks for the Crisco," she said, indicating to the stick in her hand. "I'll see you tomorrow, Moonpie." She threw back over her shoulder as she sauntered back towards her apartment. She could feel the five inch heels tightening the muscles in her calves, feeling a kick of empowerment over the idea of how good she looked.
Like all beautiful women, she was used to having men check her out, but when she felt the eyes on her back she realized the only person behind her was Sheldon. Sheldon Fucking (or Not Fucking as the case may be) Cooper was staring at her. She knew this with the confidence of a well-disciplined radar for eyes on her ass-sets. He hadn't moved from the doorway, hadn't closed the door behind her, though there was no reason for him to still be watching her. No reason at all.
Except one.
She misstepped in surprise, her foot turning over in the heel and she careened off course, flailing wildly as she toppled over sideways.
Oh yeah. She was so totally sexy. She was totally going to rock the scraped bloody knee she had now.
"Penny?"
She pulled the material of her dress back down over her ass, glad she was wearing actual underoos rather than a thong, or like nothing. If her butt in this dress had Sheldon's attention, gawd, what would her naked butt-cheek do?
He was hovering over her uncertainly, hands clenching and unclenching at his side. Penny imagined this to be caused by the need to make sure she was ok versus his distaste with personal contact, blood, and floor dirt.
"I'm fine," she told him, climbing to her feet with an ungainly lurch. Her knee hurt, her ankle was throbbing, and her pride had just taken a huge smackdown.
What made it worse, was now that she thought of it, Sheldon probably hadn't been checking her out at all. She'd just been feeling all femme fatale for a moment and attributed his actions to what she expected from normal men. He'd probably been curious to see if she could walk in what he thought to be ridiculously high heels, as a question of physics or whatever.
Turns out he was right to question her ability to do so. She totally couldn't.
"You're bleeding," he noticed, voice thready.
"I'll be fine. I'll have to wear jeans out tonight, but I'll be fine."
"Come in," he said. "I'll locate the disinfectant and surgical gloves."
That was how she ended up sitting on their kitchen counter, Sheldon sitting in Leonard's computer chair with a cotton swab liberally doused with rubbing alcohol, an antibacterial cream at his side and a kit of bandaids and other medical bandages behind it. He dabbed at the wound with precision. Penny didn't react with the sting and his eyebrow rose a bit. She'd always had good pain tolerance.
"Thanks Sheldon, you didn't have to do this, I know you have a thing about blood."
"Would you have followed the proper procedure if left to your own devices?"
Penny shook her head.
"I don't have a thing about blood," he elaborated, "besides the obvious reluctance to be in contact with any bodily fluid. Blood is treated as a biohazard due to blood-borne diseases and infections, so I don't think I am remiss to be wary. I've certainly seen enough of my own blood and treated the subsequent wounds over the years to overcome any squeamishness in the area, which I believe is what your insouciant remark was attempting to convey."
She smiled tenderly at him. So often, she thought about their interactions as her looking after him, but as always Sheldon surprised her with his capacity to reciprocate. "Thank you sweetie. I appreciate this. Consider yourself hugged."
Sheldon looked alarmed, rapidly propelling the chair away from her. She'd be insulted if his look of betrayal wasn't laughable.
"No, I mean in my mind I gave you a hug because I know you don't like physical contact. It was a mental hug."
He frowned at her. "Brains can't hug."
Penny snickered. "Why not? If you can try to blow up my mind with your mind, why can't I hug your mind using my mind?"
"Where's your evidence?"
"Right here," she said, placing her hands up on either side of her head and schooling her expression into a soft look. "Can you feel that?"
"Negative," he responded, bending over her knee again now that he knew physical contact wasn't imminent. "I do prefer the concept of a mental hug to a physical one, regardless of your primitive cognitive functions and inability to carry out such measures."
Heh. That was Sheldon code for permission to mind hug him if she ever heard one. "Can I have a Batman bandaid?" she asked, giving him puppy dog eyes.
"Excellent choice," he commended, handing it to her. The entire time he had avoided direct contact with her skin, despite his gloves, maintaining the barrier of the cotton balls between them.
Penny shrugged and slapped it on at a jaunty angle and then bent her knee. "Good as new, Doctor Doctor Doctor Cooper, PhD PhD MD."
Considering he was in top Whack-a-Doodle mode tonight, rarely catching on to her jokes or going along with her whimsy, Penny expected a lecture on how he didn't have an MD and how the additional Doctor was extraneous, but instead he sat back in his chair, seemingly relaxed, and looked up at her through hooded eyelashes.
"A medical degree hardly held any challenge to someone of my intellect, Penny. Some days, theoretical physics hardly holds any challenge. My largest constraint is modern technology's inability to keep pace."
Penny had always known he was super-freaky-deaky smart, but he rarely put it into perspective for her, and even if he had in the beginning, she wouldn't have understood exactly how ridiculously difficult theoretical physics was and what it meant for him to find it easy (some days).
x.x.x.x.
Part 2: Penny Hooking Something Up Behind The TV
"Oh good, Sheldon, it's you!" Penny exclaimed from her open doorway, leaning against the jam as she watched him open the door to his apartment. "Can you spare a few minutes? Half an hour, tops."
"I certainly can," he affirmed.
Yeah, she'd fallen into this trap before. "Good. Will you? Please?"
He gave her an odd look. "Very well. Allow me to put away these groceries and I shall join you."
"Do you need help?" Penny asked, stepping out into the hallway.
Sheldon's expression was quelling. "Do you comprehend the strict organizational schema I have implemented in our kitchen?"
"Sure!" Penny exclaimed. "Labels facing outwards. Cans in the second cabinet to the right. Soups on the first shelf, meat on the second shelf, everything else I leave on the counter so you can either put it on the third shelf or determine where it goes. Boxes in the first cabinet. Crackers and dried good on the first shelf..."
"Dried goods?" he echoed incredulously. "Are you aware that the term dry goods references textiles and other sundries? With your self-proclaimed addiction to clothing shopping, I figured that would be something you would know. So do you mean to say you would put socks next to the saltines? That's just wrong."
"Fine, fine," she told him, waving him off. "I'll be in my apartment. I should have known better than to try to come between you and your private time with your organizational schemas." She emphasized this with a rapid pumping motion that could either be the way he put things on the shelves, but sped up, or... well, something else.
"Haaa," Sheldon responded sarcastically, making a face to emphasize how very unamused he was.
Penny grinned at him and went to put on tea. She enjoyed how sometimes Sheldon was great at doling out sarcasm, but when it came to understanding it, he was pretty pathetic. It was nice to know that his big ol' brain sometimes took a break from figuring out the known and unknown universe, even though he would deny it if she put it that way.
By the time Sheldon came to join her, she had the tea properly steeped and poured into his favourite mug, which she timed perfectly so she was able to hand it to him before he sat down.
"One of the busboys at work sold me his Xbox 360 for $75. He wanted to upgrade his system so he could run the new... whatsit? Connects? On it."
"Kinect."
"Right. That." She chattered away, reaching around the back of her television. "I've got no use for motion sensor stuff. I just want to kick a little Halo butt and he threw in the game for free, so SCORE! I figured it was a pretty sweet deal. I can practice if I'm bored, and the next time Leonard locks you out of the apartment so he can bump nasties with Leslie, you and I will have something to do."
"We play Age of Conan," he reminded her.
"Well now we'll have options." Options that would keep her thoughts violent and bloody instead of the other base instincts he occasionally brought out of her during their late-night quests. "Anyway, I just want you here in case I do something wrong with the set-up. I'm trying to be more independent with these things and Leonard always tries to take over before I can figure it out." That, and she had been worried that he would check out her butt as she bent behind the television.
"That's commendable," he told her. "Leonard will not always be around to take care of your tech needs."
"I suppose marrying him so I'll always have someone to set up my TiVo is wrong, right?"
"You have sufficiently set up your own TiVo for years," Sheldon pointed out. "It is recording America's Next Top Model as we speak."
Penny huffed, half in amusement, half in annoyance, and pushed her hair out of her face with the back of her hand. "That was just a bad example to illustrate my point. A girl needs to make sure she doesn't miss out on the latest episode of Desperate Housewives."
"Leonard would be happy to marry you for any reason if that was your point," Sheldon pointed out in a voice that indicated that this conversation was beyond (or far below) his level of comprehension. "If you are serious, I suspect he will buy a ring tomorrow."
"That's sad, but I don't want to marry Leonard. I just meant that the only way he'll be around for the rest of my life to do stuff like set up my XBOX would be if I married him, and marrying him for that purpose would be foolish. So, here I am being self sufficient." She levelled a look at him over her shoulder to find him regarding her with a bored expression. "Well, somewhat. There, I think I'm done."
"Check the cable connections," he offered in return. "I am receiving what is commonly referred to as snow or noise. Did you know that in analog television sets snow is the result of electronic noise and radiated electromagnetic noise accidentally picked up by the antenna? There are a number of causes, though atmospheric sources of noise are the most ubiquitous certainly, and include electromagnetic signals prompted by cosmic microwave background radiation."
"Fascinating," Penny deadpanned, trying to change the yellow and white cables that were impossible to tell apart, despite the 'helpful' color coding, when you were in the dark shadowy space behind the television.
"It is fascinating," Sheldon responded enthusiastically. "I remember there was one occasion as a child when I pretended that the interruption was due to an orbiting spaceship attempting to contact me through electromagnetic pulses. I developed an algorithm to translate the bursts of data, but it turned out to be noise."
"That's cute," Penny told him. "It's almost normal. I once sat in front of my tv with a colander on my head, babbling back to the static as if someone could see me on the other side."
"You see a comparison?" Sheldon asked, disbelief evident in his tone. "Your story is pure fantasy whereas mine was based on scientifically sound whimsy."
"Right. How's the XBOX now?"
"Still incorrect."
Penny switched out the yellow and white cables again and looked at him expectantly. At his brief head shake, she grabbed the XBOX, not nearly as gently as she should, and checked to see if it was a) getting power, and b) on.
It was.
Penny groaned in frustration. "I give up!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air dramatically as she stood in one graceful motion. "You try. I think the XBOX is faulty." Then, quieter, she muttered, "I'm going to murder that little jerk for not telling me."
"Nonsense Penny, the issue is with your television, not the XBOX." Sheldon gave her a superior look of I-have-a-bajillion-PhD's-and-am-smarter-than-every-man-on-this-continent-I-shall-fix-your-piddly-technology-issues-without-breaking-a-sweat-and-then-crow-about-my-success.
Or at least that's what she always assumed his slightly smug, slightly arrogant confidence meant.
So they traded positions, Penny grabbing the remote and falling back on her couch and Sheldon hovering in front of her television, staring at the dustbunnies behind it in horror.
Yeah, she could kind of identify with him there, they were like 65% shed hair and skin, and 100% gross.
Penny hit the input button on the remote, more for something to do than anything else.
The opening screen for Halo turned on.
"You didn't press the input button?" Penny asked, mouth open in shock. And fine, so her tone was a bit accusatory and a lot interrogative, but what the heck? This was genius Sheldon Cooper, he always remembered to press the input button.
Sheldon stared back at her, face curiously blank. His eye twitched, the corners of his mouth turned down as though tasting something sour. "My apologies. I was distracted."
"Distracted by... Sheldon?" Penny asked, breath catching in the back of her throat at his direct gaze, all intense blue eyes and reproof for the necessity of her to even ask such questions.
"Monopoles," he answered tersely, and then was off explaining some problem he was trying to work out, words almost tripping over themselves in his haste to get out her front door.
The shame of it was, Penny couldn't say for sure that he wasn't distracted by some new idea about physics. It sure made a lot more sense than Sheldon being distracted by the way she was on her hands and knees, butt sticking up in his direction.
x.x.x.x.x.x.
Part 3: Penny Needs a Hero (But She'll Settle For Sheldon)
Penny had stupid days. She knew, according to some across the hall, those would by any day ending in "y" but for normal people like her, there were just days where all synapses weren't firing on full throttle or whatever, and she was stuck in a pre-coffee haze despite downing multiple cups over the run of a day. It happened. She could even argue it happened to incredibly smart people too, because there were just some days where Sheldon (or Leonard) just couldn't span the divide between being a genius and being human. Of course, stupid days were entirely different things when your IQ was immeasurable as opposed to people like Penny who needed all her brain cells.
Today was not one of those days. Today was one of the days where bad, terrible, unlucky things happened before she got to the caffeine, and her reaction-time was sluggish because she was mostly still sleeping despite the fact her eyes were open, she was on her feet – mostly – and she was pretty sure she had just sent off a text to someone, though she couldn't remember who. More or less, this was known as waking up before eleven on a Saturday.
And she really wanted waffles.
Penny knew she had a waffle iron somewhere, in one of her cupboard, shoved in the back so she wouldn't be tempted to make them all the time and then have to clean the stupid thing. And really, all those calories weren't worth it, she may as well eat a steak. A really small steak, but still.
She was perched on the cabinet on one knee, reaching for the waffle iron and pulling it by the cord, when she realized her entire collection of china plates, the ones given to her by her dead grandmother and as precious as they were hideous, were being pulling right along with it. She reached up to grab them at the last second, but they toppled off the shelf, sliding part way into her outstretched hands until she had a handful of highly breakable china staggered across her palms, balanced on her wrists as well as she was capable of balancing delicate china anywhere, but she wasn't able to push them back up to safety because she was scared to shift upwards with her own balance so precarious.
There was no way out of this one, Penny realized with dread, especially not at 7:15 in the morning.
Except.
"SHELDON!" she called out, hoping the neighbours didn't misinterpret the scream to mean something else entirely. Old Mrs. Vartabedian kept giving the two of them reproachful and meaningful stares when she saw them in the hallway already, Penny didn't even want to know what the old biddy would do if she thought she had proof. Probably attack Sheldon with her umbrella. Or give him a coupon for 25% off engagement rings. It really could go either way, depending on whether she kept staring at them meaningfully because she thought they were together or whether she thought they should be together and were wasting time skirting the issue.
It might be worth it just to see the expression of confusion on Sheldon's face.
His super sonic hearing was useful, when she heard the door lock turn and the door open behind her.
"I'm missing Doctor Who," he informed her.
"I kind of need help," she prompted. "What's taking so long?"
She was really glad to know someone like Sheldon, someone who wouldn't care about the tiny pair of underwear she had on, the ones that matched the cute tank top she was wearing, but didn't meet it in any stretch of the word (or the material). Someone who wouldn't pause in the doorway and stare at her instead of helping, because in no universe was Sheldon Cooper a red blooded male.
Only, that was kind of wrong, wasn't it? She had thought she caught him doing just that twice already, so maybe he was.
Her pulse sped up at the idea, her body feeling a little warm at the thought.
Suddenly, without hearing him move at all, not even a rustle of his robe, she could feel his chest behind her shoulder blades and his arm reaching alongside hers. Even on the counter, he was still a few inches taller than she was, and his arms were definitely longer than hers, easily pushing the plates back up onto the shelf as though her tenuous hold had all been in her mind.
It wasn't until he was done that Penny noticed his hand resting, incredibly softly, on her hip. Suddenly, the heat of it was flaring, all points of contact pointing out just how strange it was for Sheldon to be touching her in any way. She was already jarred by the idea she might actually like it if he did happen to be checking her out, but to have his hand, a dichotomy of coal hot and light touch, on her skin, made her unable to breathe. Penny leaned backwards against his chest, tilting her head slightly to see him, a motion anyone else would take as coy.
He stepped away, causing her to grab hold of the cupboard door to keep from reacting like the plates, and falling backwards without the security of his weight behind her. She was still looking backwards at him, it going through her mind at how ridiculously like some kind of pin-up she must look.
He must have been thinking the same, only without the words "pin-up" or "ridiculous" because his eyes spanned down for just a fraction of a second and zeroed in. Seriously, that was the only way she could describe it. Then he was looking away, muttering about his Whosian addiction as he went out the door.
Could she really count a two second scan as being checked out? Penny wondered, especially considering her panties didn't quite cover her entire butt, leaving a good fourth of the cheeks in plain sight. Didn't a guy need a little more time than that to take in the sights?
That was when she realized that with an eidetic memory, he'd never need to take a picture to make it last longer, he'd never be able to forget it.
Her chest warmed with something that was part embarrassed dismay, and part intrigue as she gingerly removed herself from the counter, waffles so much less of a priority.
x.x.x.x.x.
Part 4:Who is an Authority on Everything? Sheldon Cooper
Penny craned her neck, staring at her butt in the dress she was wearing, one that made it seem twice as large as it actually was. Of course the dress would over emphasize that area, she thought with dawning horror, the friend she had borrowed it from needed all the emphasis she could get. Here she was, an extra in a club scene on a bona fide television show, one with actors she recognised, and her ass looked like two pumpkins smooshed together, what with the pleating effects of the ruches.
Seriously. Pumpkin ass.
She was ready to throw her shoe against the mirror and break down into sobs, drag out the ice cream and tequila for a pity party, and gorge until she broke out of the seams of the stupid thing.
What she really needed was a second opinion.
Good thing she knew someone who liked to state their opinion on everything.
"Ok guys, this is a serious question, because the camera adds ten pounds and I want to be an extra, not an extra wide load, but does this dress make my butt look big?"
She turned around, pausing to highlight the issue before continuing the three-sixty to face them again. Never would she have thought that she'd deliberately allow Howard to comment on any body parts, but she was desperate and while she usually had a good sense of how clothing looked on her, when she started to consider retiring back home and going on a food eating contest circuit, there wasn't anywhere to go but up.
"Yes," Sheldon said simply and went back to eating his food while the other three were still somewhere in the drooling/head shaking phase.
Penny boggled at him, her eyes widening with an implied threat. "Are you saying I have pumpkin ass?" she demanded, tone low and threatening him to tread very carefully with his answer.
"The shape of your posterior falls above the means for woman your age and weight. In addition, the ruching of your dress gathers the material in such a way that your curves are visually enhanced by drawing the eye to proportional extrinsic curvature of your buttocks, as defined by the n-dimensional Euclidean space. I believe the question you were really asking was whether it is noticeable, which it is."
"Huh?" Penny asked.
"What?" Howard responded in a shrill voice, the first of them to react. Penny wasn't sure, but it probably because his brain was already there. "Did you just tell Penny that she has a great ass?"
"Mathematically speaking," Sheldon demurred, still eating lunch.
"Are you just going to let him?" Howard asked her. "If I told you that your ass was so fine, I would write a song about it, you would hit me, but Sheldon tells you that you," here Howard did a cupping motion with his hands, giving Sheldon a horrified glance, "have a perfectly shaped round butt and you're just going to stand there?"
Penny shrugged, a small smiling hovering on her lips. "I can't argue with the numbers, can I?" she asked.
Leonard finally seemed to recover, picking his jaw up off the floor with great difficulty. He made a squeaking noise like Raj for a moment and then cleared his throat. "You look great, Penny," he told her in a strangled voice.
Sheldon shot them all exasperated looks. "Penny didn't ask to be coddled. She is self-aware enough of her own body image that she understands that the lens of even a professional video camera, coupled with the aperture and focal length, can distort the final image into the illusion she is more rotund." While she was still reeling from that word, he turned to her. "I would consider your blue dress, unless you are an extra for a Sir Mix-A-Lot video, then carry on."
"Thanks Sheldon," Penny responded, the scathing sarcasm tripping from her lips automatically before she could remind herself that he wasn't being deliberately mean, he was just answering the question she had asked. And really, she knew she could rely on him for an honest answer, she just hadn't expected him to bother answering her question seriously.
He nodded his head at what he took as gratitude, and Penny actually felt her frustration eke out into a more bemused reaction. She leaned over, and before he could recoil away, planted a quick kiss on his cheek. "Appreciate the tip, sweetie," she said before sauntering away, a little added sway in her step.
She had thought she was delusional the first time she noticed him checking her out, but this was the fourth time the idea that he might be crossed her mind. Once she could brush off, twice she started to watch for it, but now the seed was planted that if there was an authority on what her butt looked like, it might weirdly be Sheldon Cooper.
And Penny realized she had subconsciously already known that, had it in the back of her mind as a possibility when she went searching out a second opinion. She might actually be encouraging it now. Changing dresses was easy, so why hadn't she?
x.x.x.x.x.x.
Part 5: Penny is All About Equality
Turn about was fair play, Penny decided, watching Sheldon as he worked on his whiteboard. His butt wriggled as he crossed the expanse of it, writing with such speed, that she was unsure how his arm didn't get tired. Speaking of his arm, the tendons of his forearm were standing out from the exertion of writing continuously for so long, and, well, she'd noticed them the first time they met and hadn't really looked since, not with any kind of meaning behind it.
She was just starting to wonder how he kept those muscles even, as despite how slim he was his arms were definitely lithe, when he abruptly changed hands and kept going.
Ambidextrous, that explained a lot.
And, well, that was kind of promising in ways she still was trying to keep under wraps in her brain. Ambidextrous. Dexterous. With all ten fingers rather than five.
Baaaad brain.
She wasn't sure how long she sat there, pretending to be absorbed in her magazine and deciding that Sheldon actually had a lot going for him, things she usually didn't dwell on and had safely tucked away in the back of her mind as verboten. It was all surfacing now, though. Things like the fact that she had taken pause during that terrible incident with her panties on the telephone wire to notice the way his eyes were intensely blue as he glared at her, or that she had noticed his hands before, particularly while they had been making Penny Blossoms and he was able to navigate the delicacy of the sequins almost better than she could.
Now she found herself flushing a little as it all hit her at once.
"Terrible news," Leonard announced, bursting through the apartment door and causing Penny to jerk upwards, the forgotten magazine on her lap crinkling. "Siam Palace ran out of take-out boxes and refused to fill my order."
Sheldon managed to ignore two hours of Penny blatantly staring at his ass, but that got his attention.
"That's preposterous," he retorted. "Take-out dining accounts for 75% of their business. That would be like Bad Boy running out of burgers, or the Cheesecake Factory out of cheesecake. The loss of profit for one night alone would make the rate of return on purchasing boxes a reasonable expenditure."
Leonard shrugged. "Maybe the shipment just didn't come in on time, I don't know. The issue is whether you want me to go get something else or if you're willing to eat in-restaurant."
Penny wasn't sure which change in his schedule horrified Sheldon more.
"Tonight is Thai food night! I always get mi crab and chicken satay with extra peanut sauce from the Siam Palace on Monday nights."
"I know," Leonard responded. "That's why I said it was terrible news. So which would you rather? I hear Szechuan Palace is back in business, I could try there."
"I just told you, Leonard, do try to keep up," Sheldon said, grabbing his jacket.
"We're going out for supper?" Penny asked in delight, tossing her magazine aside. "I'll be right back, don't leave without me. I just need to freshen up."
It was one thing to be sitting around in a slopping t-shirt and a messy ponytail while watching her neighbour shake his bootay for hours at a time, but quite another to go out for supper looking like a 80s hobo. By the time she was back, Howard and Raj were waiting downstairs, looking equally as excited as she was. She didn't figure out why until they got to the Siam Palace and met their waitress.
The girl had a better butt than she did, Penny realized in dismay. She wasn't sure she could take watching Sheldon do micro-peeks at someone else when she had just figured out that he was doing it to her.
Sheldon had spent the entire trip over talking about profit margins and what would happen if there was an American-wide shortage on take-out containers, including the ecological impact and the overall body weight index of the population. He was still chatting away about how Styrofoam wasn't biodegradable when J-Lo came up to take the orders of the table across from them, dropping her note pad so she had to bend to get it, giving their table an unobstructed view.
Everyone looked, it was impossible not to. Even Penny found her eyes spanning over automatically, but when she quickly looked back to see if Sheldon had, he was still blithely going on about seagulls and something about some kind of Pacific Trash Vortex, still in full lecture mode.
And ok, so the boy could multitask like no one else, so that didn't even mean anything, but Penny couldn't help but wonder if she had just missed it or if it had never happened.
When the waitress bent over again, this time taking condiments off a shelf to their left, Penny kept her gaze entirely on Sheldon.
Not even a micro-peek.
"Penny, are you listening to me?" he asked, pouting slightly at the fact her attention had seemed to wander. Not that him pouting helped her attention span, but it at least gave her a definite focus.
Holy Hannah. What the heck was that? Penny wondered. No one could resist giving a sideways glance to the Kim Kardashians in the world, especially someone Penny had been secretly slotting as an ass man. If he was going to notice something, someone, it would be their uber hot waitress, right?
If Sheldon wasn't drawn to their waitress, what the heck was he drawn to?
Or, the better question was, who?
x.x.x.x.x.
Part 6:
All Actresses Have an Innate Sense of Timing, Right?
It was time, Penny decided, to take matters into her own hands. She'd had enough of Sheldon's policy of looking but never touching, and it amazed her how often he really did give her swift glances that seemed impossible to interpret as the usual "check out" but together added to a larger picture, and that picture was that he was attracted to her.
She thought that was lucky, since she spent a lot of time doing the same thing to him, more often now that she realized that the reason he walked behind her on the stairs wasn't (or maybe was only partially) a matter of manners.
Today was the final straw. She had been placing her drink on the coffee table, setting it down with her food balanced in one hand, and behind her he had clenched his hands on his thighs and looked resolutely away. Penny did the customary check: was her drink on a coaster? Was she spilling food on the floor? Was there too much ice to soda ration?
When she couldn't figure out which of his triggers set him off, and why he wasn't berating her about it like he usually did, she approached the question from another angle, realized that with his surprising weakness for her bottom, that he was actually clenching his hands to stop himself from reaching out. It was such a guy reaction, but so foreign to Sheldon, that she had felt the thrill right down to her toes.
He had actually wanted to touch her. Sheldon. How did a girl not find that the most flattering thing to happen to her in months?
The time had come, and it looked a lot like later that night (because if there was one vice Penny would own to wholeheartedly, it was being impatient).
It was around the time when Sheldon finished with his nightly routine and settled down in front of the desk in his bedroom to write in his journal. Penny wondered if he chronicled what had happened this afternoon and all previous incidents. She also wondered if there was any hope at all that she could get her hands on them.
Dear Diary. Today I almost gave in to temptation and touched Penny. Tomorrow I will do better.
Only, he'd sound less like a thirteen year old girl and more like a genius physicist with a Spock complex. There'd probably be mathematical equations, big words he couldn't print all on one line, and references to dead guys. Or science fiction characters.
He's dead Jim! (in reference to his libido). Stuff like that.
He'd be thinking about her, that was the main point. He'd be reliving the sight of her bent in front of him and deciding that there was no reason he couldn't be impervious to her charms.
Or, at least that was what Penny was hoping, because she was about to show him the Perv in impervious, and he was going to like it. She took a deep breath, more convinced than ever that this was the right decision. Oh yes, it was. Sheldon wouldn't even know what hit him over the head and then climbed in his lap.
Penny burst into his room, barely noticing anything beyond the fact he was sitting in his chair, before she was climbing onto his lap, her knees on either side of his hips.
His eyes were wide with shock, mouth agape, and his hands... where were his hands? Her intention had been to grab them and put them on her round buttocks for him, but she couldn't seem to... oh.
She didn't know anyone but emo kids who called that journal writing these days.
This seriously could not go any better.
Right?
At least, once he broke out of his shock, there'd be less work for her to do.
He just stared, entirely stiff.
Penny licked her lips, finally finding his other hand on the armrest, fingers clenched into the meshed padding. She trailed her fingers down his hand, pulling his palm up when his hand twitched, and tightened his reach around her body so she was right up against him, her hand braced on his shoulder.
His eyes were still wide, body utterly still. "Sheldon?" she asked, wriggling a bit to encourage him into motion. She was getting seriously worried now, a massive freak out better than breaking his mind entirely. It was really just bad timing that something that should have freaked him out a little (and ultimately was probably a terrible decision on her part, but she was terrible at waiting, and impulsive, so...) was actually paralysing him with shock. "Sheldon, please."
Both of his hands had fallen away, completely lax and forgotten about. His entire body was tense beneath her, jaw clamped so tightly that she thought he might break a few teeth. What really freaked her out a lot was the fact that his eyes were completely unmoving, rarely blinking, but not focused on her face at all. They were focused on a spot behind her that would have been roughly where she was located when he first noticed her striding into his room.
Great, he was frozen like a computer. So much for the theory Sheldon was human.
"Sheldon, I know you're attracted to me and I'm attracted to you too, and I never would have forced you into doing anything but I was hoping to cajole you into allowing me to seduce you. Just this once, if that's all you agreed to, but I kind of thought maybe we could try to see if this attraction thing between us worked out, and... I'm sorry, ok? This wasn't what was supposed to happen. Just, don't hate me forever."
She backed off, trying not to really look at him as she fled out the door.
She was calling herself fifty different kinds of a fool as she emerged from the shower, her t-shirt sticking to her damp skin as she ran a towel through her hair, to find a very angry Sheldon standing in the center of her bedroom. She jumped, almost out of her own skin, and tried to skirt around him. "Is there a problem sweetie?" she asked, ignoring the elephant in the room.
"The problem," he said, advancing on her, "is that you rarely weigh the repercussions of your actions. You don't think, you just jump in feet first and then suffer the consequence of a broken leg."
She took a step back, hand fluttered by her side. She should be insulted, a tiny voice informed her, but for some reason she couldn't quite think why.
"Did you think I would be grateful you removed the stimuli that had be in such a state of... astoundment? That after your ill conceived attempt at seduction, I could just get on with my routine? Did you consider that I might not want a lapful of wriggling female, despite any perceived and imaginary evidence to the contrary?"
"Imaginary!" she yelped. "It wasn't..."
"Did you pause for a moment to look beyond your own hormone fuelled desires to consider the implications of your actions? Did you imagine my reaction would be that of one of your Neanderthal mates and ravish you when you were clearly disobeying at least three boundaries I had clearly set forth to negate such blatantly disagreeable actions?" His eyes were entirely focused, drilling into her face with the force of his wrath. "Worse, your inability to complete a task once sidetracked. You lack the commitment to follow through once things don't turn out your way."
"What are you saying?" she asked, startled to find her back hitting against the wall. She hadn't noticed herself backing up when challenged by his predatory advancement on her, and if she had she would have held her ground so she wouldn't put herself in this situation. Normally, it would be comforting to know this was Sheldon, but this Sheldon was an unknown entity, one she herself had created, and now she would have to suffer the consequences.
"You're gonna finish what you started," he demanded, the slight burr of Texas evident in his cadence.
Penny's breath stuttered.
"Sheldon?" she squeaked, voice an active high in shock and the fact she couldn't quite seem to get air into her lungs. "Sheldon, you're... sex?"
He simply stared at her pointedly.
"No, it's not... you freaked out!" she responded hotly. "You froze at just the smallest bit of contact. It's not... I've decided... no, Sheldon, I don't think that's a good idea. Maybe if you're interested we can work up to it and take it slowly so you have time to adjust to the idea, but right now we'd probably just start going and you'd freeze and I have no way of rolling you over to your apartment."
"Do not underestimate me once my mind is made. Are you reneging on your offer?"
Penny cut his assurances short by stripping off her t-shirt and standing in front of him without a stitch on, in a typical superwoman pose. She was expecting him to give her the deer-in-headlights look, his blue eyes wide and possibly terrified. Sheldon, of course, rarely did what was expected of him.
She realized, with his hand on her hip and his mouth against hers, that taking it slow definitely wasn't an option. Her back slammed against the wall and she wasn't sure if it was from him pressing her up against it, or her pulling him towards her, careening them into an immoveable object. His hand slid far enough down to draw her leg over her hip as she groped for his pant buttons.
Her heart was beating so rapidly she thought it was going to stutter right out of her chest. Every breath felt tight, and every moment felt so right and yet entirely precious because it was so unbelievable for Sheldon to be here, to be touching her. So unbelievably right.
"Yes," she groaned breathlessly, cleared her throat and stilled, moving her hand away from him. "Yes," she said more seriously. "I'm reneging. I don't think... I think you should stop if you mean this to be a one time thing, because I don't think I can offer that anymore."
Sheldon snorted, honest to god snorted, at her. "I don't change my mind lightly," he reminded her. "And when I do, I commit to the conversion wholeheartedly. There are no halves."
"Oh," Penny said, brow furrowing just the tiniest as she tried to pick up on whether he had just said he loved her or not. After a moment, she decided it didn't matter, because he had also used the word commit, and that was surprisingly good enough for her.
x.x.x.x.
Forget worrying about Mrs. Vartabedian Penny thought, she was going to wake Mr. Eisenhauer on the first floor.
Fini