as i stare at a masterpiece (pg)
Title: as i stare at a masterpiece
Characters: Sheldon, Leonard, Penny (Sheldon/Penny)
Words: 1,705
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: The Big Bang Theory and all its characters do not belong to me.
Summary: Leonard sees them sitting in the dark.
There are bagels on the breakfast table one morning.
He hasn’t woken up properly yet, so he thinks it’s a dream for a moment. But he wipes and readjusts his glasses and they’re still there. Out of the box, symmetrically arranged on a plate and from the look of it, very fresh.
Sheldon is standing near the refrigerator, one eye on the clock and one eye to gage his reaction. He doesn’t speak for a very long time. He wastes a lot of his morning time staring at the round pieces of bread, deciding whether or not to take one.
‘You know, according to the salesman, they can only be deemed freshly prepared for another one-hundred and nineteen seconds. So I suggest that you consume one right now rather than devouring it with your expression of immature fascination.’
He breaks out of his reverie and sees Sheldon looking at him. Once he realizes that the full attention is on him, he continues. ‘You must be wondering about this deviation from our average breakfast.’
He coughs and clears his throat. ‘Yeah, what brought about this…deviation?’
Sheldon’s standing by him now. His hands are folded on his chest and he doesn’t quite meet his eyes while speaking, preferring to look around and wildly gesticulate. ‘I thought,’ he says in a slightly high-pitched voice, ‘this would be a sign of social consideration. I specifically told the baker to not include any milk or butter due to your lactose-intolerance.’
Leonard frowns again. ‘Uh-uh,’ he barely articulates, prompting him to go on.
He doesn’t. He looks at the watch and mutters something like fifty seconds and goes into the bathroom.
He stands there looking around for any clue, anything that’ll shed a light on this behavior but he finds nothing. It’s a simple box of bagels, symmetrically arranged on a plate without milk or butter or any dairy products. This simplicity concerns him; the preposterous idea that what’s in front of him is real scares him even more.
But the bagels stay there on the table until he’s hungry enough that he finds it compelling to take a bite.
They taste delicious.
-
‘Sheldon did something nice for me today,’ he tells Penny between kisses that night. They’re at her apartment on the couch and the TV is long forgotten as she snakes her hand up his thigh.
She doesn’t reply and kisses him harder instead. Her hands are slowly caressing his hair and he reaches downward to pull her shirt off when she stops.
‘I’m not..,’ she shrugs a little and pulls her shirt back down. ‘I’m not feeling so well today, you know.’
He raises his eyebrows but soon backs off. He nods his head slowly, trying to understand the situation as she glances at him apologetically and offers more wine. When she comes back, they’re sitting on two different sides of the couch and Penny opens her laptop and starts staring intensely onto the screen.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks, and his voice is carefully controlled so as to not shout it out.
She shrugs again. ‘Just… something,’ she says, and doesn’t look at him.
He lets that go as well.
-
He’s home early the next night.
He looks for his key inside his jacket only to notice that the door is open. There’s only a crack of light that can be seen; it’s almost like someone had left it open by mistake.
He opens the door and stops short of announcing his presence.
Sheldon’s sitting in his usual spot and breathing loudly into a paper bag, his knees twitching a little and his back heaving up and down. From what he can see of the paper bag, he can tell that he’s shivering as well. Penny’s there too, rubbing him on the shoulder and pushing his hair back as he tries to heave into the bag. She takes a wet washcloth and wipes his forehead and he leans into her for support. They look like they have been sitting like that for a long time and Penny’s still in her waitress uniform. None of the lights are on. He can picture this scenario word by word in his head.
He imagines Sheldon sitting there in the dark or calling Penny or shouting loudly enough that she can hear him through the door. He imagines her rushing in and sitting next to him with the paper-bag and the wet washcloth. He pictures them sitting in the dark for solace, so engrossed in each other that they’ve forgotten to even shut the door properly.
Sheldon doesn’t speak. His words come out in fragments and his breathing is ragged and heavy. He feels like he’s interrupting something personal, something that’s only going to remain a special memory for two, and in the back of his mind, he knows there’s no place for him here.
He puts his key back down in the bowl very slowly and goes out, taking care to close the door gently so that it doesn’t creak.
‘I know, sweetie,’ he hears Penny murmuring from inside, ‘I know.’
She says it like it means something.
-
Next morning, Sheldon lets him use the bathroom when it’s five past eight.
He’s a physicist. He might not have scanned his brain when he was young and he might not have graduated college when he was twelve but he’s a physicist nonetheless.
He sees signs before something’s supposed to happen. He makes hypotheses based on earlier data and he comes to new conclusions. It’s simple, routine, periodic and he knows how to do that better than anything else.
The pieces of his puzzle fall back in place before he has time to arrange them. In the end, he just lets it happen.
-
He works late the next night, choosing to eat in the lab and stay there alone rather than facing everyone else. Raj sends him a few text messages asking him to come for lunch and then a frantic voicemail asking him where he is, but he ignores all of them.
‘You know, that’s not very healthy.’
He turns back to see Leslie standing there, one hand on the light switch and stoic eyes fixed on him. He puts his sandwich down.
‘I believe the social convention is to ask you what happened,’ she says, advancing towards him until they’re standing face to face.
‘It’s nothing,’ he shrugs. ‘I don’t want to go back yet.’ He takes a deep breath and shakes his head, looking at her with her arms crossed across her chest and the bag on the lab counter, a sign that she’s at least pretending to listen.
‘It’s just,’ he sighs, ‘Sheldon will be there and Penny and I’m not sure…’
‘Oh, they are,’ she interrupting him with absolute certainty before he can finish.
He frowns a little more and pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘What?’
‘Oh come on, Leonard,’ she takes a few steps towards him and cups his face with one of her hands. ‘How can you not see that?’ Her voice is much gentler with a little bit of sympathy in it as she pats his back once and leaves him alone.
He sits in the dark for the rest of the night and thinks of Sheldon in Penny’s arms in the empty apartment and closes his eyes.
-
He breaks up with Penny the next day.
They don’t have a conversation because he’s not used to it, he doesn’t say anything like It’s not you, it’s me and no one cries. They speak in expressions and silence now, one hand gesture and one smile enough to confirm everything.
‘Yeah,’ she whispers and he looks down. They stand far apart from each other now, and his hands are shoved deep inside his pockets and she’s picking out invisible dust from her skirt. Sheldon would’ve been proud.
They don’t hug at the end. He moves two steps forward and she moves one. He extends his left arm a little bit and she extends her right. They come close enough for him to feel the fabric of her clothes and her slightly ragged breathing. He tilts his head to the left and instinctively, she tilts hers to the right.
And then they walk away.
-
They have dinner together the next night, all three of them.
Sheldon orders takeout. He stresses that he wants Indian food but puts the Chinese and Thai menus in front of him anyway. Penny comes early to ‘divide the food’, as she says, and brings wine. She spends a lot of time at the kitchen counter pouring three glasses of wine and watching them out of the corner of her eye.
None of them speak while eating. They eat in perfect, awkward silence and the only sound that can be heard is the clatter of the spoon. Leonard wonders why no one has thought of turning on the television, now of all times, but he doesn’t speak either.
When they finish and he’s gone to deposit in fork and plate in the sink, he comes back to Sheldon and Penny sitting together, side by side, on the couch and looking at him nervously.
He imagines a confrontation out of a movie scene or an awkward conversation where accusations fly and someone goes and cries in the bathroom.
But, nothing of that sort happens. He sits down and wipes his mouth with the napkin, looking at them expectantly.
They don’t speak at all. They try a few times, but they end up doing nothing but opening and closing their mouth. They don’t speak at all.
And then, in the perpetual silence, Sheldon sits up and takes her hand in his. His hand trembles a little as she grabs her and his fingers twitch a little as they near hers and for one moment, it looks like he’s almost going to pull back.
But he doesn’t.
He takes her hand in his and they stay together that way. They don’t try to use words at all because this is much simpler than that.
This is fact. Hypothesis. Experiment. Procedure. Evidence. Conclusion.
They sit in the same way in the dark when Leonard gets up and walks away.
End.
Characters: Sheldon, Leonard, Penny (Sheldon/Penny)
Words: 1,705
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: The Big Bang Theory and all its characters do not belong to me.
Summary: Leonard sees them sitting in the dark.
There are bagels on the breakfast table one morning.
He hasn’t woken up properly yet, so he thinks it’s a dream for a moment. But he wipes and readjusts his glasses and they’re still there. Out of the box, symmetrically arranged on a plate and from the look of it, very fresh.
Sheldon is standing near the refrigerator, one eye on the clock and one eye to gage his reaction. He doesn’t speak for a very long time. He wastes a lot of his morning time staring at the round pieces of bread, deciding whether or not to take one.
‘You know, according to the salesman, they can only be deemed freshly prepared for another one-hundred and nineteen seconds. So I suggest that you consume one right now rather than devouring it with your expression of immature fascination.’
He breaks out of his reverie and sees Sheldon looking at him. Once he realizes that the full attention is on him, he continues. ‘You must be wondering about this deviation from our average breakfast.’
He coughs and clears his throat. ‘Yeah, what brought about this…deviation?’
Sheldon’s standing by him now. His hands are folded on his chest and he doesn’t quite meet his eyes while speaking, preferring to look around and wildly gesticulate. ‘I thought,’ he says in a slightly high-pitched voice, ‘this would be a sign of social consideration. I specifically told the baker to not include any milk or butter due to your lactose-intolerance.’
Leonard frowns again. ‘Uh-uh,’ he barely articulates, prompting him to go on.
He doesn’t. He looks at the watch and mutters something like fifty seconds and goes into the bathroom.
He stands there looking around for any clue, anything that’ll shed a light on this behavior but he finds nothing. It’s a simple box of bagels, symmetrically arranged on a plate without milk or butter or any dairy products. This simplicity concerns him; the preposterous idea that what’s in front of him is real scares him even more.
But the bagels stay there on the table until he’s hungry enough that he finds it compelling to take a bite.
They taste delicious.
-
‘Sheldon did something nice for me today,’ he tells Penny between kisses that night. They’re at her apartment on the couch and the TV is long forgotten as she snakes her hand up his thigh.
She doesn’t reply and kisses him harder instead. Her hands are slowly caressing his hair and he reaches downward to pull her shirt off when she stops.
‘I’m not..,’ she shrugs a little and pulls her shirt back down. ‘I’m not feeling so well today, you know.’
He raises his eyebrows but soon backs off. He nods his head slowly, trying to understand the situation as she glances at him apologetically and offers more wine. When she comes back, they’re sitting on two different sides of the couch and Penny opens her laptop and starts staring intensely onto the screen.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks, and his voice is carefully controlled so as to not shout it out.
She shrugs again. ‘Just… something,’ she says, and doesn’t look at him.
He lets that go as well.
-
He’s home early the next night.
He looks for his key inside his jacket only to notice that the door is open. There’s only a crack of light that can be seen; it’s almost like someone had left it open by mistake.
He opens the door and stops short of announcing his presence.
Sheldon’s sitting in his usual spot and breathing loudly into a paper bag, his knees twitching a little and his back heaving up and down. From what he can see of the paper bag, he can tell that he’s shivering as well. Penny’s there too, rubbing him on the shoulder and pushing his hair back as he tries to heave into the bag. She takes a wet washcloth and wipes his forehead and he leans into her for support. They look like they have been sitting like that for a long time and Penny’s still in her waitress uniform. None of the lights are on. He can picture this scenario word by word in his head.
He imagines Sheldon sitting there in the dark or calling Penny or shouting loudly enough that she can hear him through the door. He imagines her rushing in and sitting next to him with the paper-bag and the wet washcloth. He pictures them sitting in the dark for solace, so engrossed in each other that they’ve forgotten to even shut the door properly.
Sheldon doesn’t speak. His words come out in fragments and his breathing is ragged and heavy. He feels like he’s interrupting something personal, something that’s only going to remain a special memory for two, and in the back of his mind, he knows there’s no place for him here.
He puts his key back down in the bowl very slowly and goes out, taking care to close the door gently so that it doesn’t creak.
‘I know, sweetie,’ he hears Penny murmuring from inside, ‘I know.’
She says it like it means something.
-
Next morning, Sheldon lets him use the bathroom when it’s five past eight.
He’s a physicist. He might not have scanned his brain when he was young and he might not have graduated college when he was twelve but he’s a physicist nonetheless.
He sees signs before something’s supposed to happen. He makes hypotheses based on earlier data and he comes to new conclusions. It’s simple, routine, periodic and he knows how to do that better than anything else.
The pieces of his puzzle fall back in place before he has time to arrange them. In the end, he just lets it happen.
-
He works late the next night, choosing to eat in the lab and stay there alone rather than facing everyone else. Raj sends him a few text messages asking him to come for lunch and then a frantic voicemail asking him where he is, but he ignores all of them.
‘You know, that’s not very healthy.’
He turns back to see Leslie standing there, one hand on the light switch and stoic eyes fixed on him. He puts his sandwich down.
‘I believe the social convention is to ask you what happened,’ she says, advancing towards him until they’re standing face to face.
‘It’s nothing,’ he shrugs. ‘I don’t want to go back yet.’ He takes a deep breath and shakes his head, looking at her with her arms crossed across her chest and the bag on the lab counter, a sign that she’s at least pretending to listen.
‘It’s just,’ he sighs, ‘Sheldon will be there and Penny and I’m not sure…’
‘Oh, they are,’ she interrupting him with absolute certainty before he can finish.
He frowns a little more and pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘What?’
‘Oh come on, Leonard,’ she takes a few steps towards him and cups his face with one of her hands. ‘How can you not see that?’ Her voice is much gentler with a little bit of sympathy in it as she pats his back once and leaves him alone.
He sits in the dark for the rest of the night and thinks of Sheldon in Penny’s arms in the empty apartment and closes his eyes.
-
He breaks up with Penny the next day.
They don’t have a conversation because he’s not used to it, he doesn’t say anything like It’s not you, it’s me and no one cries. They speak in expressions and silence now, one hand gesture and one smile enough to confirm everything.
‘Yeah,’ she whispers and he looks down. They stand far apart from each other now, and his hands are shoved deep inside his pockets and she’s picking out invisible dust from her skirt. Sheldon would’ve been proud.
They don’t hug at the end. He moves two steps forward and she moves one. He extends his left arm a little bit and she extends her right. They come close enough for him to feel the fabric of her clothes and her slightly ragged breathing. He tilts his head to the left and instinctively, she tilts hers to the right.
And then they walk away.
-
They have dinner together the next night, all three of them.
Sheldon orders takeout. He stresses that he wants Indian food but puts the Chinese and Thai menus in front of him anyway. Penny comes early to ‘divide the food’, as she says, and brings wine. She spends a lot of time at the kitchen counter pouring three glasses of wine and watching them out of the corner of her eye.
None of them speak while eating. They eat in perfect, awkward silence and the only sound that can be heard is the clatter of the spoon. Leonard wonders why no one has thought of turning on the television, now of all times, but he doesn’t speak either.
When they finish and he’s gone to deposit in fork and plate in the sink, he comes back to Sheldon and Penny sitting together, side by side, on the couch and looking at him nervously.
He imagines a confrontation out of a movie scene or an awkward conversation where accusations fly and someone goes and cries in the bathroom.
But, nothing of that sort happens. He sits down and wipes his mouth with the napkin, looking at them expectantly.
They don’t speak at all. They try a few times, but they end up doing nothing but opening and closing their mouth. They don’t speak at all.
And then, in the perpetual silence, Sheldon sits up and takes her hand in his. His hand trembles a little as she grabs her and his fingers twitch a little as they near hers and for one moment, it looks like he’s almost going to pull back.
But he doesn’t.
He takes her hand in his and they stay together that way. They don’t try to use words at all because this is much simpler than that.
This is fact. Hypothesis. Experiment. Procedure. Evidence. Conclusion.
They sit in the same way in the dark when Leonard gets up and walks away.
End.