fic; TBBT: Flying the Coop.
title: Flying the Coop.
fandom: The Big Bang Theory.
pairing: Penny/Sheldon
rating: PG-13?
words: 4053.
disclaimer: Fiction. I don't even know any real-life scientists, so.
notes: Every time I write Big Bang fic, I feel like I'm out of practice writing Big Bang fic and then get worried it's awful, but season three is like some sort of horrible television hell for me so far and I needed to make myself feel better or something. So, Sheldon's brother comes to visit and, you know how it goes, Penny realizes her feelings.
Penny imagines Sheldon's brother in pretty specific detail. Like, maybe creepy detail, but, well, work has been slow and she has a lot of time to think about -- stuff. Sheldon's brother is stuff.
He looks a lot like Sheldon, but he knows normal guy things, like football scores and how to make ribs and what fake boobs feel like (although Sheldon could probably monologue about what they would feel like using science or something).
His name is something vaguely out there, like Sheldon and Missy, but he owns it with a nickname and no one even notices. Wait, no, last week she decided everyone just calls him, "Cooper," that whole last name thing where everyone, including girls, just use it. He goes by Coop for short.
It's become kind of a game, her whole making up what Sheldon's brother is like. And she's super intrigued. Probably because he didn't even cop to having a brother until she'd known him for an entire year. He won't give up any details and she didn't know to ask Missy about it that one time.
It's this whole weird obsession (maybe that's slightly too strong of a word?) that makes her all the more excited when she sees the post on Sheldon's MySpace:
::::COOP will be FLYING THE COOP::::
Brosef, I'll be in town on Tuesday. Couldn't tell you sooner or you would've made plans to leave. Don't play like you wouldn't.
She tries to click through to see the profile, but his stuff is private and his picture is one of Foghorn Leghorn wearing a beret. It pretty much reveals nothing except that she was right on the whole Coop thing. (She awards herself five imaginary scoreboard points.)
It's already Saturday and if she wants to be around for Coop's visit, she's got to rearrange her work schedule. She ends up with double shifts on Sunday and Monday, which allows her the time off, but doesn't give her much of a chance to see the guys and press Sheldon for details.
She makes time to tell him she plans to meet Coop though -- through a text an hour before his flight is supposed to land.
I'll drive you to the airport! Don't try and fight this!
He takes her up on the offer because Leonard's still at the school, a point he makes loudly and obnoxiously.
As he fidgets in the passenger seat, she finally gets a chance to ask some questions. And he dodges them like a pro.
So, did you and your brother hang out when you were kids?
Penny, that was a stop sign.
(Whatever.)
By the time they're at the curb of airport pick up, Penny's only learned one thing -- that Coop's name is actually Weldon. She's terrified for a minute, thinking about all the teasing that had to have come from having rhyming names, until she remembers she decided Coop could handle himself and always stuck up for Sheldon (except for when he was the one doing the teasing).
It's not until Sheldon's pointing at a guy that looks almost exactly like him emerging through the doors that Penny realizes maybe her whole game was a bad idea.
Like, she was right about how he looked, but somehow, in just a slightly better outfit, with slightly better hair, she's immediately found herself attracted to a Cooper.
(Not that she's never quietly admitted to herself that Sheldon is kind of actually attractive -- it's just he's always distracting her from the admission with some crazy physics babbling or a rant about pizza toppings.)
She and Sheldon both step out of the car to help with luggage, but there's none to help with. The single duffle bag he's carrying is all he has. And although that makes sense for such a "normal" guy, she kind of thought obsessively over-packing might be hereditary.
Coop/Weldon pulls Sheldon into a hug, which Sheldon returns pretty weakly before pulling away and directing his attention to Penny.
"Penny, this is Weldon. Weldon, this is Penny, our neighbor."
"Ah, this is Penny." He sticks out his hand. "And you can call me Coop, everyone but Sheldon here does."
Penny doesn't even think twice before saying, "I know."
"You know?" He sounds confused.
Uh.
"Oh, yeah, um, Sheldon mentioned it on the way over here."
"I most certainly did not," Sheldon butts in.
"Yeah, Sheldon's normally all, 'that is a slap in the face to the name Mother chose for you,' blah, blah blah."
She's still backpedaling.
"Yeah, he...said that. I think he used the word 'abomination' though."
Penny levels a glance at Sheldon and whatever interruption he was going to blurt out, he doesn't.
"That definitely sounds like Sheldon. Thanks for picking me up by the way. I never understood why this one," he thumbs at Sheldon, "never got his license."
It's a perfect opening and they spend the whole drive home with Penny re-telling the Sheldon Cooper Driver's License Disaster, Sheldon yelping in disagreement every so often.
Coop laughs at Penny's jokes in all the right places and uses ordinary vocab and he's pretty much some bizarro world Sheldon.
Penny's surprised that she's not exactly sure she how she feels about that.
They spend the first night playing Wii. Raj and Howard come over and Coop and Penny win the championship in doubles tennis. Wolowitz protested the teams, insisting something about their genes being "athletically superior," but they ended up together even when they pulled names out of a hat, so he gave up.
(Well, he called them some German names for about an hour, but he basically gave up.)
She's pretty much completely mindfucked by the end of the night. Coop is Sheldon minus everything that makes him Sheldon.
They talk about how he had a friend who played Huskers football and which types of booze they can't drink anymore because they got sick. They talk about VH1 reality shows and their favorite Arcade Fire songs.
They're clicking in every possible way, which is why, when she hesitates after Coop asks her to get lunch tomorrow while everyone else is at work, she's convinced she's lost her goddamn mind.
She accepts, of course, but that she even had to give it any thought is like a giant alarm or something. One she can't snooze.
Coop lets her pick the restaurant and they end up at a pizza place Sheldon won't go to anymore because the crust is "too overwhelming."
Penny zones out around some story about his old fraternity brothers and her mind kicks into crazy analyze-y mode.
Coop's T-shirt is like one of Sheldon's, only slightly dumber somehow, a slogan plastered across the front.
His pants are looser and she realizes that, once she can't see it, she kind of took for granted the lanky Cooper man frame.
His hair is only a little bit longer, but cut unevenly. It doesn't really work on his head shape.
His forearms...his forearms are actually really nice. Do Sheldon's look like that? She thinks back really hard to last night, Sheldon's hand wrapped around the Wii remote and realizes that, yeah, they do.
When the pizza place's television fizzles out and Coop doesn't immediately stand to fix it, Penny realizes everything she's finding "wrong" with Coop are all the things that make him different from Sheldon.
It's the longest lunch of her life.
She ducks out for dinner on her own, but ends up back at the guys' place right after she finishes her tater tots.
Coop continues being super nice to her, but she's too absorbed in watching Sheldon to care much. All the weird things Sheldon does, they're starting to seem endearing. The way he gets a cute (what?), confused look on his face when Coop tries to high five him. The way he gets really into talking about things she couldn't possibly understand, but that somehow seem important.
Like, no, seriously, what the fuck is going on?
She only spends an hour there before she has to head back to her apartment to figure out where the hell her head's at. She watches three stupid romantic comedies on TV, up til 4 a.m. and all she takes away from it is that apparently she and Sheldon are soulmates and she just couldn't see it until now.
Stupid Hollywood and their stupid crazy talk.
Coop's flight leaves Friday morning. Turns out this was just a long layover on his way some place else (she knows he said where -- she just, she can't remember). She drives Coop to the airport and Sheldon stays behind, making something up about having lab time booked and "this is why you should always let people know in advance when you intend on inviting yourself to stay."
They couldn't have timed hitting rush hour any better and as the car inches along, Coop makes easy conversation.
It's easy right up until he brings up Sheldon.
"So, my brother. How he's doing?"
Penny's not sure how to take that.
"He's doing good. He's made some, um, really good progress in his research...I think."
"No, no, I mean, like, with people. We always worried about him, he never seemed to get very close to anybody, not even us. We don't want him to be, like, lonely."
"Oh, oh, yeah. No, he's good. We all hang out a lot and, you know, do stuff or whatever. It's fun."
She's feeling uneasy talking about Sheldon and can't put her finger on why.
"That's awesome to hear. I hope you don't mind me saying this, but when my mom told me he had a friend who was a girl, I pretty much couldn't believe it. But here you are."
He doesn't say it meanly or anything, which is why it's weird that she's on the defensive.
"Here I am."
Coop's oblivious to the tone in her voice and continues on, like she's not having some crisis of personality or faith or whatever in the driver's seat.
"Did he ever tell you about his last girl friend? This girl from our neighborhood, she'd come over all the time and he'd do experiments and she'd ooh and ahh. My mom made him ask her to a dance and she ended up dancing with some other guy all night. And you know, he didn't even tell us that. My mom had to hear from some PTA lady."
Penny's flare of anger coincides with an opening in traffic and she guns it into an empty lane. She vows right then never to mention that story to Sheldon.
By the time she's finally dropped Coop off, she's somewhere between never being able to see Sheldon again and wanting to drive right to the school and give him a hug. She settles for going home and playing some Age of Conan.
Despite her headset and her yelling at a bunch of high schoolers to man the fuck up, she still hears one of the guys come home. When she checks her peephole and it's just Leonard, her heart sinks a little.
She wanders over to the apartment anyway, Sheldon should be home soon and since she's not sure what to say to him, she might as well as get comfortable over there. She settles in on the couch.
Since their relationship flamed out like a -- really flame-y thing, she hasn't spent a whole lot of time with only Leonard. She's never been able to tell if he really is OK with their being just friends (again) or if one day he's just going to decide to fixate on her (again), puppy dog looks and nervous science babbling. And although she's sure she'll never end up in bed with him (again), there are still a million ways for things to be awkward.
That's why, when Leonard starts in with, "Penny, this is gonna be weird, but -- can I ask you a question?" all the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
"Uh, sure, Leonard, what's up?"
"So. Girls."
Penny has a brief flash of panic that he's going to ask her something about her and then feels like some sort of super bitchy ego queen.
"Girls."
"Do girls still do that thing where they tease you when they like you? Or is that just for the fourth grade? Or is that something people say in the fourth grade but it's never true? Or is that just --"
"Leonard, you and Leslie Winkle have a relationship I could never begin to understand."
"It's not Leslie Winkle." He looks up for a second, like he's expecting some sort of reaction, but she really has put all her Leonard feelings into a little box. Or bottle. They're gone.
"Ooh, all right, dish."
He's blushing furiously and she can remember why she liked him in the first place, in kind of a distant, looking-back sort of way. His anxiety is sort of endearing. Sort of.
"Oh, I'm probably reading into things. There's just this graduate student. She's always goading me or poking me or something. She even challenged one of my theories on --"
The key clicks into the lock and Penny stops listening, but comes back to herself long enough to say, "Sounds like she likes you, ask her out. What's the worst that could happen?"
Leonard is running down a list of the worst things that could happen, but she's already tuned him back out and is watching Sheldon stride into the apartment.
"Leonard. Penny," he says as he sets his bag down.
Her heart's in her chest or her throat or some place else it doesn't belong and she still can't figure out what the fuck is going on.
Luckily Sheldon is hellbent on eating dinner and watching part of a documentary he DVR'd, so she has a whole hour to think about things as some dude rambles on about national parks.
She breaks it down for herself. Somehow, the whole Coop thing made her, like, appreciate Sheldon more. But not in a normal way. Not in the way you appreciate your old roommate when your new roommate suddenly starts sacrificing geckos.
It's different. It's more like she's appreciating watching the muscles in his jaw move as he chews.
Or appreciating that, despite clearly being an "indoor kid," he's still sort of got a little bit of a nice tan.
Or appreciating the way he explains what a car commercial actually means for her wallet when she says that maybe she should buy a new car.
It's like he's strong and attractive and smart enough to save her from things.
It's also like she's drunk or something, she feels that crazy.
Leonard's cell phone buzzes near the end of the movie and Penny watches him practically light up when he looks at the display.
"Grad student?"
He's sort of staring at his phone now.
"Leonard? Grad student?"
"Yeah." Still staring, still dazed.
"Well, answer it!"
He snaps to and jabs at the screen, rushing out a hello into the receiver before standing and leaving the room.
"I take it you know about Teresa then?" Sheldon's looking at her.
"Is that the grad student? He mentioned a little something earlier."
"Only a 'little something?' You should consider yourself lucky. He's been practically unbearable for the entire week. I must say, I believe his work is suffering greatly. At this rate, Kiki at the laundromat will win a Nobel Prize before Leonard."
He smirks.
"Aw, he's just got a little crush."
"Well, crush or no, science waits for no man, Penny."
"You don't think you could ever be distracted by a girl?"
Sheldon gives a short laugh.
"Doubtful."
"What if, uh, what's her name, Marie Curie was trying to hit it with you?"
"Her deceased state aside, if Marie Curie were trying to 'hit' anything on my person, I would immediately evacuate the area. The radioactivity coursing from that woman could mutate a cow."
She should've known he'd have an answer for everything, but it's fun, it always is, bantering with him. Or, uh, teasing him. She's a poke and a challenged theory away from being the graduate student to his Leonard.
Oh, what the hell.
"Well, what abut, like, biology? There's got to be a place for that. You've got to have the same, uh, urges everyone else does."
"Honestly, Penny, I can't believe you would think I would let such a variable hang around unchecked. I learned to control all that in grade school. When I was 5."
"It's got to come up sometimes -- like, when you're provoked?" She pokes at his arm, grinning.
She ends up leaning a little closer into him on the couch, mostly involuntarily. But maybe a little voluntarily.
"I can assure you it's nearly never an issue."
"What? Why?"
"I am rarely provoked in such a manner."
He looks almost embarrassed, it's a face she's never seen on him before and she's immediately drawn to it.
"All right, let's test this theory out then."
Oh my god, there it is. Challenged theory. Check.
"What? I don't think I understand."
"You try to go do...science. And I'll try and distract you."
Sheldon's looking at her out of the corner of his eye and she can tell he's considering it. And she's kind of proud, when, in the back of her mind, she's pretty sure he wouldn't consider it for anyone else.
"Oh, all right, fine. I do have an e-mail I need to send. And since I've missed the end of this documentary, I may as well do some work." He clicks the TV off.
Once he's at his computer, she catches up with herself. She could just leave him alone. Or she could flash him. But she wants to do something more. Something different. Something to show her newfound appreciation. Or test it out at least.
The way she would distract someone like Coop would be easy, some whispering in his ear, a hand across his chest, stretching so her shirt rode up, whatever. All that stuff comes natural. But Sheldon. Hm.
She can see he's already opened his e-mail box and begun typing and since she doesn't know how much he has to write, she's got to move quickly.
What to do, what to do. Another way to get to a guy like Coop would be to stroke his ego. Worth a shot with Sheldon.
She begins asking him questions about everything she can think of. What a shooting star is, why helium makes balloons float, how she keeps frying her laptop battery. He pauses to answer every question, looking irritated at the start, but always getting into the explanation by the end of it.
When 20 minutes have passed and his cursor is still blinking in the middle of a sentence, he realizes what she's doing.
"That's enough, Penny. No more questions."
But she's figured it out now. It's the same stuff that would work on Coop, it's the same stuff that would work on any guy, she just has to tailor it for Sheldon.
She comments on how fast he can type.
She runs a finger over his furrowed brow, telling him he has to relax.
She's lightly scratching the back of his neck as she tucks his tag back into his shirt when she feels him shiver.
It should be a eureka moment (where does that phrase come from anyway?), but she's lost sight of what she was doing. All she knows is that Sheldon's different than Coop, different than Leonard, different than every other guy and she likes it, appreciates it.
He looks up at her, anticipating her next move, or ready to surrender or something, but she's out of ideas. She looks back down at him sitting in his chair.
She lets herself stare for a moment, eyes flicking to his mouth, and back up, watching him slowly blink.
It's been a weird few days, Coop and Sheldon and Coop and Sheldon and he's still looking at her. This will go on forever if she lets it, both this moment right here and this weird feeling of confusion (attraction?).
She dips her head, not sure exactly what she's going to do. She's still at the distance where she could divert and touch her forehead to his, which would say something, for sure, but maybe not what she wants to say? Instead she keeps going, only recognizing at the last second that he seems to be tipping his head up a little bit.
Her lips meet his only lightly, just barely resting there, waiting to see if he wants to continue, if she does.
When he makes a little noise in the back of his throat and she can feel it through his lips, she decides she wants to continue. Oh, she definitely does.
She opens her mouth, taking his bottom lip between hers and sucking it in a little bit. He does the same to her top lip and it's not until her tongue is in his mouth, wrestling his for space that it really hits her -- he's, uh, he's kissing her back.
He gets control of the kiss, somehow, and then his tongue is in her mouth and his hands, his apparently huge hands, are wrapped around what feels like the whole back of her head as he twists in his seat to get a better angle.
She uses her own hands to move his whole body, steering him by the shoulders, so that he's sitting sideways in his chair. In a split-second decision, she climbs into his lap, straddling him, legs on either side.
His hands have moved up to her hair and every time she realizes where her own hands are, they're on the move again. It's making out, it's groping, it's -- distracting. She loses her balance with the force of the kiss (and the fact that her legs don't quite reach the ground) and suddenly she's clawing at the desk, at his computer, trying to right herself. She hears his computer beep, an awful, unholy sound that makes them both pull back quickly.
Penny sees the error message the same time Sheldon does and she immediately starts apologizing. He looks at the computer and back to her, she can feel her cheeks burning and her hair doesn't feel like it normally does. She must look crazy. He mumbles something about his own brilliance in tweaking the autosave feature and she figures everything must be OK.
She stays like that for a second, feet clanging against the chair legs, trying to figure out what she's going to do.
She's sitting on Sheldon's lap because she made out with him because his perfect, adorable brother isn't her type anymore and good fucking grief, this is all insane.
It's made all the more insane when Leonard comes down the hallway a second later. He takes one look at them and groans.
"No, no, no. I never saw that, I never saw it, I feel asleep on the phone, this isn't happening." He backs down the hall toward his room and disappears.
She looks at Sheldon one more time, he looks unfazed, but a little messy around the edges. A little, like, worn. It's, uh, intensely attractive, but he's still not saying anything.
She half falls, half stands up off his lap.
"I'm gonna...go."
"Perhaps I misjudged my own abilities to override biological impulses."
"Yeah?"
He looks at her, eyes all earnest or whatever, she can't pinpoint it.
"Yeah."
"Cool."
She heads for the door, pausing as he says her name.
"In case you were curious, I've already explained the flaw in my theory," he's got that crazy look in his eyes still. "I forgot to account for emotional influences."
A smile takes over face and she immediately flinches as she realizes her lips are a little raw. Wow, that happened.
The next time she sees Coop, he's standing to the right of Sheldon at the altar. He says in his speech at the reception that he knew in the car on the way back to the airport that she had feelings for his brother. She makes her own speech and tells Coop he knew before her. Sheldon, for the first time in his life, admits he was the last to know.
&&.
fandom: The Big Bang Theory.
pairing: Penny/Sheldon
rating: PG-13?
words: 4053.
disclaimer: Fiction. I don't even know any real-life scientists, so.
notes: Every time I write Big Bang fic, I feel like I'm out of practice writing Big Bang fic and then get worried it's awful, but season three is like some sort of horrible television hell for me so far and I needed to make myself feel better or something. So, Sheldon's brother comes to visit and, you know how it goes, Penny realizes her feelings.
Penny imagines Sheldon's brother in pretty specific detail. Like, maybe creepy detail, but, well, work has been slow and she has a lot of time to think about -- stuff. Sheldon's brother is stuff.
He looks a lot like Sheldon, but he knows normal guy things, like football scores and how to make ribs and what fake boobs feel like (although Sheldon could probably monologue about what they would feel like using science or something).
His name is something vaguely out there, like Sheldon and Missy, but he owns it with a nickname and no one even notices. Wait, no, last week she decided everyone just calls him, "Cooper," that whole last name thing where everyone, including girls, just use it. He goes by Coop for short.
It's become kind of a game, her whole making up what Sheldon's brother is like. And she's super intrigued. Probably because he didn't even cop to having a brother until she'd known him for an entire year. He won't give up any details and she didn't know to ask Missy about it that one time.
It's this whole weird obsession (maybe that's slightly too strong of a word?) that makes her all the more excited when she sees the post on Sheldon's MySpace:
::::COOP will be FLYING THE COOP::::
Brosef, I'll be in town on Tuesday. Couldn't tell you sooner or you would've made plans to leave. Don't play like you wouldn't.
She tries to click through to see the profile, but his stuff is private and his picture is one of Foghorn Leghorn wearing a beret. It pretty much reveals nothing except that she was right on the whole Coop thing. (She awards herself five imaginary scoreboard points.)
It's already Saturday and if she wants to be around for Coop's visit, she's got to rearrange her work schedule. She ends up with double shifts on Sunday and Monday, which allows her the time off, but doesn't give her much of a chance to see the guys and press Sheldon for details.
She makes time to tell him she plans to meet Coop though -- through a text an hour before his flight is supposed to land.
I'll drive you to the airport! Don't try and fight this!
He takes her up on the offer because Leonard's still at the school, a point he makes loudly and obnoxiously.
As he fidgets in the passenger seat, she finally gets a chance to ask some questions. And he dodges them like a pro.
So, did you and your brother hang out when you were kids?
Penny, that was a stop sign.
(Whatever.)
By the time they're at the curb of airport pick up, Penny's only learned one thing -- that Coop's name is actually Weldon. She's terrified for a minute, thinking about all the teasing that had to have come from having rhyming names, until she remembers she decided Coop could handle himself and always stuck up for Sheldon (except for when he was the one doing the teasing).
It's not until Sheldon's pointing at a guy that looks almost exactly like him emerging through the doors that Penny realizes maybe her whole game was a bad idea.
Like, she was right about how he looked, but somehow, in just a slightly better outfit, with slightly better hair, she's immediately found herself attracted to a Cooper.
(Not that she's never quietly admitted to herself that Sheldon is kind of actually attractive -- it's just he's always distracting her from the admission with some crazy physics babbling or a rant about pizza toppings.)
She and Sheldon both step out of the car to help with luggage, but there's none to help with. The single duffle bag he's carrying is all he has. And although that makes sense for such a "normal" guy, she kind of thought obsessively over-packing might be hereditary.
Coop/Weldon pulls Sheldon into a hug, which Sheldon returns pretty weakly before pulling away and directing his attention to Penny.
"Penny, this is Weldon. Weldon, this is Penny, our neighbor."
"Ah, this is Penny." He sticks out his hand. "And you can call me Coop, everyone but Sheldon here does."
Penny doesn't even think twice before saying, "I know."
"You know?" He sounds confused.
Uh.
"Oh, yeah, um, Sheldon mentioned it on the way over here."
"I most certainly did not," Sheldon butts in.
"Yeah, Sheldon's normally all, 'that is a slap in the face to the name Mother chose for you,' blah, blah blah."
She's still backpedaling.
"Yeah, he...said that. I think he used the word 'abomination' though."
Penny levels a glance at Sheldon and whatever interruption he was going to blurt out, he doesn't.
"That definitely sounds like Sheldon. Thanks for picking me up by the way. I never understood why this one," he thumbs at Sheldon, "never got his license."
It's a perfect opening and they spend the whole drive home with Penny re-telling the Sheldon Cooper Driver's License Disaster, Sheldon yelping in disagreement every so often.
Coop laughs at Penny's jokes in all the right places and uses ordinary vocab and he's pretty much some bizarro world Sheldon.
Penny's surprised that she's not exactly sure she how she feels about that.
They spend the first night playing Wii. Raj and Howard come over and Coop and Penny win the championship in doubles tennis. Wolowitz protested the teams, insisting something about their genes being "athletically superior," but they ended up together even when they pulled names out of a hat, so he gave up.
(Well, he called them some German names for about an hour, but he basically gave up.)
She's pretty much completely mindfucked by the end of the night. Coop is Sheldon minus everything that makes him Sheldon.
They talk about how he had a friend who played Huskers football and which types of booze they can't drink anymore because they got sick. They talk about VH1 reality shows and their favorite Arcade Fire songs.
They're clicking in every possible way, which is why, when she hesitates after Coop asks her to get lunch tomorrow while everyone else is at work, she's convinced she's lost her goddamn mind.
She accepts, of course, but that she even had to give it any thought is like a giant alarm or something. One she can't snooze.
Coop lets her pick the restaurant and they end up at a pizza place Sheldon won't go to anymore because the crust is "too overwhelming."
Penny zones out around some story about his old fraternity brothers and her mind kicks into crazy analyze-y mode.
Coop's T-shirt is like one of Sheldon's, only slightly dumber somehow, a slogan plastered across the front.
His pants are looser and she realizes that, once she can't see it, she kind of took for granted the lanky Cooper man frame.
His hair is only a little bit longer, but cut unevenly. It doesn't really work on his head shape.
His forearms...his forearms are actually really nice. Do Sheldon's look like that? She thinks back really hard to last night, Sheldon's hand wrapped around the Wii remote and realizes that, yeah, they do.
When the pizza place's television fizzles out and Coop doesn't immediately stand to fix it, Penny realizes everything she's finding "wrong" with Coop are all the things that make him different from Sheldon.
It's the longest lunch of her life.
She ducks out for dinner on her own, but ends up back at the guys' place right after she finishes her tater tots.
Coop continues being super nice to her, but she's too absorbed in watching Sheldon to care much. All the weird things Sheldon does, they're starting to seem endearing. The way he gets a cute (what?), confused look on his face when Coop tries to high five him. The way he gets really into talking about things she couldn't possibly understand, but that somehow seem important.
Like, no, seriously, what the fuck is going on?
She only spends an hour there before she has to head back to her apartment to figure out where the hell her head's at. She watches three stupid romantic comedies on TV, up til 4 a.m. and all she takes away from it is that apparently she and Sheldon are soulmates and she just couldn't see it until now.
Stupid Hollywood and their stupid crazy talk.
Coop's flight leaves Friday morning. Turns out this was just a long layover on his way some place else (she knows he said where -- she just, she can't remember). She drives Coop to the airport and Sheldon stays behind, making something up about having lab time booked and "this is why you should always let people know in advance when you intend on inviting yourself to stay."
They couldn't have timed hitting rush hour any better and as the car inches along, Coop makes easy conversation.
It's easy right up until he brings up Sheldon.
"So, my brother. How he's doing?"
Penny's not sure how to take that.
"He's doing good. He's made some, um, really good progress in his research...I think."
"No, no, I mean, like, with people. We always worried about him, he never seemed to get very close to anybody, not even us. We don't want him to be, like, lonely."
"Oh, oh, yeah. No, he's good. We all hang out a lot and, you know, do stuff or whatever. It's fun."
She's feeling uneasy talking about Sheldon and can't put her finger on why.
"That's awesome to hear. I hope you don't mind me saying this, but when my mom told me he had a friend who was a girl, I pretty much couldn't believe it. But here you are."
He doesn't say it meanly or anything, which is why it's weird that she's on the defensive.
"Here I am."
Coop's oblivious to the tone in her voice and continues on, like she's not having some crisis of personality or faith or whatever in the driver's seat.
"Did he ever tell you about his last girl friend? This girl from our neighborhood, she'd come over all the time and he'd do experiments and she'd ooh and ahh. My mom made him ask her to a dance and she ended up dancing with some other guy all night. And you know, he didn't even tell us that. My mom had to hear from some PTA lady."
Penny's flare of anger coincides with an opening in traffic and she guns it into an empty lane. She vows right then never to mention that story to Sheldon.
By the time she's finally dropped Coop off, she's somewhere between never being able to see Sheldon again and wanting to drive right to the school and give him a hug. She settles for going home and playing some Age of Conan.
Despite her headset and her yelling at a bunch of high schoolers to man the fuck up, she still hears one of the guys come home. When she checks her peephole and it's just Leonard, her heart sinks a little.
She wanders over to the apartment anyway, Sheldon should be home soon and since she's not sure what to say to him, she might as well as get comfortable over there. She settles in on the couch.
Since their relationship flamed out like a -- really flame-y thing, she hasn't spent a whole lot of time with only Leonard. She's never been able to tell if he really is OK with their being just friends (again) or if one day he's just going to decide to fixate on her (again), puppy dog looks and nervous science babbling. And although she's sure she'll never end up in bed with him (again), there are still a million ways for things to be awkward.
That's why, when Leonard starts in with, "Penny, this is gonna be weird, but -- can I ask you a question?" all the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
"Uh, sure, Leonard, what's up?"
"So. Girls."
Penny has a brief flash of panic that he's going to ask her something about her and then feels like some sort of super bitchy ego queen.
"Girls."
"Do girls still do that thing where they tease you when they like you? Or is that just for the fourth grade? Or is that something people say in the fourth grade but it's never true? Or is that just --"
"Leonard, you and Leslie Winkle have a relationship I could never begin to understand."
"It's not Leslie Winkle." He looks up for a second, like he's expecting some sort of reaction, but she really has put all her Leonard feelings into a little box. Or bottle. They're gone.
"Ooh, all right, dish."
He's blushing furiously and she can remember why she liked him in the first place, in kind of a distant, looking-back sort of way. His anxiety is sort of endearing. Sort of.
"Oh, I'm probably reading into things. There's just this graduate student. She's always goading me or poking me or something. She even challenged one of my theories on --"
The key clicks into the lock and Penny stops listening, but comes back to herself long enough to say, "Sounds like she likes you, ask her out. What's the worst that could happen?"
Leonard is running down a list of the worst things that could happen, but she's already tuned him back out and is watching Sheldon stride into the apartment.
"Leonard. Penny," he says as he sets his bag down.
Her heart's in her chest or her throat or some place else it doesn't belong and she still can't figure out what the fuck is going on.
Luckily Sheldon is hellbent on eating dinner and watching part of a documentary he DVR'd, so she has a whole hour to think about things as some dude rambles on about national parks.
She breaks it down for herself. Somehow, the whole Coop thing made her, like, appreciate Sheldon more. But not in a normal way. Not in the way you appreciate your old roommate when your new roommate suddenly starts sacrificing geckos.
It's different. It's more like she's appreciating watching the muscles in his jaw move as he chews.
Or appreciating that, despite clearly being an "indoor kid," he's still sort of got a little bit of a nice tan.
Or appreciating the way he explains what a car commercial actually means for her wallet when she says that maybe she should buy a new car.
It's like he's strong and attractive and smart enough to save her from things.
It's also like she's drunk or something, she feels that crazy.
Leonard's cell phone buzzes near the end of the movie and Penny watches him practically light up when he looks at the display.
"Grad student?"
He's sort of staring at his phone now.
"Leonard? Grad student?"
"Yeah." Still staring, still dazed.
"Well, answer it!"
He snaps to and jabs at the screen, rushing out a hello into the receiver before standing and leaving the room.
"I take it you know about Teresa then?" Sheldon's looking at her.
"Is that the grad student? He mentioned a little something earlier."
"Only a 'little something?' You should consider yourself lucky. He's been practically unbearable for the entire week. I must say, I believe his work is suffering greatly. At this rate, Kiki at the laundromat will win a Nobel Prize before Leonard."
He smirks.
"Aw, he's just got a little crush."
"Well, crush or no, science waits for no man, Penny."
"You don't think you could ever be distracted by a girl?"
Sheldon gives a short laugh.
"Doubtful."
"What if, uh, what's her name, Marie Curie was trying to hit it with you?"
"Her deceased state aside, if Marie Curie were trying to 'hit' anything on my person, I would immediately evacuate the area. The radioactivity coursing from that woman could mutate a cow."
She should've known he'd have an answer for everything, but it's fun, it always is, bantering with him. Or, uh, teasing him. She's a poke and a challenged theory away from being the graduate student to his Leonard.
Oh, what the hell.
"Well, what abut, like, biology? There's got to be a place for that. You've got to have the same, uh, urges everyone else does."
"Honestly, Penny, I can't believe you would think I would let such a variable hang around unchecked. I learned to control all that in grade school. When I was 5."
"It's got to come up sometimes -- like, when you're provoked?" She pokes at his arm, grinning.
She ends up leaning a little closer into him on the couch, mostly involuntarily. But maybe a little voluntarily.
"I can assure you it's nearly never an issue."
"What? Why?"
"I am rarely provoked in such a manner."
He looks almost embarrassed, it's a face she's never seen on him before and she's immediately drawn to it.
"All right, let's test this theory out then."
Oh my god, there it is. Challenged theory. Check.
"What? I don't think I understand."
"You try to go do...science. And I'll try and distract you."
Sheldon's looking at her out of the corner of his eye and she can tell he's considering it. And she's kind of proud, when, in the back of her mind, she's pretty sure he wouldn't consider it for anyone else.
"Oh, all right, fine. I do have an e-mail I need to send. And since I've missed the end of this documentary, I may as well do some work." He clicks the TV off.
Once he's at his computer, she catches up with herself. She could just leave him alone. Or she could flash him. But she wants to do something more. Something different. Something to show her newfound appreciation. Or test it out at least.
The way she would distract someone like Coop would be easy, some whispering in his ear, a hand across his chest, stretching so her shirt rode up, whatever. All that stuff comes natural. But Sheldon. Hm.
She can see he's already opened his e-mail box and begun typing and since she doesn't know how much he has to write, she's got to move quickly.
What to do, what to do. Another way to get to a guy like Coop would be to stroke his ego. Worth a shot with Sheldon.
She begins asking him questions about everything she can think of. What a shooting star is, why helium makes balloons float, how she keeps frying her laptop battery. He pauses to answer every question, looking irritated at the start, but always getting into the explanation by the end of it.
When 20 minutes have passed and his cursor is still blinking in the middle of a sentence, he realizes what she's doing.
"That's enough, Penny. No more questions."
But she's figured it out now. It's the same stuff that would work on Coop, it's the same stuff that would work on any guy, she just has to tailor it for Sheldon.
She comments on how fast he can type.
She runs a finger over his furrowed brow, telling him he has to relax.
She's lightly scratching the back of his neck as she tucks his tag back into his shirt when she feels him shiver.
It should be a eureka moment (where does that phrase come from anyway?), but she's lost sight of what she was doing. All she knows is that Sheldon's different than Coop, different than Leonard, different than every other guy and she likes it, appreciates it.
He looks up at her, anticipating her next move, or ready to surrender or something, but she's out of ideas. She looks back down at him sitting in his chair.
She lets herself stare for a moment, eyes flicking to his mouth, and back up, watching him slowly blink.
It's been a weird few days, Coop and Sheldon and Coop and Sheldon and he's still looking at her. This will go on forever if she lets it, both this moment right here and this weird feeling of confusion (attraction?).
She dips her head, not sure exactly what she's going to do. She's still at the distance where she could divert and touch her forehead to his, which would say something, for sure, but maybe not what she wants to say? Instead she keeps going, only recognizing at the last second that he seems to be tipping his head up a little bit.
Her lips meet his only lightly, just barely resting there, waiting to see if he wants to continue, if she does.
When he makes a little noise in the back of his throat and she can feel it through his lips, she decides she wants to continue. Oh, she definitely does.
She opens her mouth, taking his bottom lip between hers and sucking it in a little bit. He does the same to her top lip and it's not until her tongue is in his mouth, wrestling his for space that it really hits her -- he's, uh, he's kissing her back.
He gets control of the kiss, somehow, and then his tongue is in her mouth and his hands, his apparently huge hands, are wrapped around what feels like the whole back of her head as he twists in his seat to get a better angle.
She uses her own hands to move his whole body, steering him by the shoulders, so that he's sitting sideways in his chair. In a split-second decision, she climbs into his lap, straddling him, legs on either side.
His hands have moved up to her hair and every time she realizes where her own hands are, they're on the move again. It's making out, it's groping, it's -- distracting. She loses her balance with the force of the kiss (and the fact that her legs don't quite reach the ground) and suddenly she's clawing at the desk, at his computer, trying to right herself. She hears his computer beep, an awful, unholy sound that makes them both pull back quickly.
Penny sees the error message the same time Sheldon does and she immediately starts apologizing. He looks at the computer and back to her, she can feel her cheeks burning and her hair doesn't feel like it normally does. She must look crazy. He mumbles something about his own brilliance in tweaking the autosave feature and she figures everything must be OK.
She stays like that for a second, feet clanging against the chair legs, trying to figure out what she's going to do.
She's sitting on Sheldon's lap because she made out with him because his perfect, adorable brother isn't her type anymore and good fucking grief, this is all insane.
It's made all the more insane when Leonard comes down the hallway a second later. He takes one look at them and groans.
"No, no, no. I never saw that, I never saw it, I feel asleep on the phone, this isn't happening." He backs down the hall toward his room and disappears.
She looks at Sheldon one more time, he looks unfazed, but a little messy around the edges. A little, like, worn. It's, uh, intensely attractive, but he's still not saying anything.
She half falls, half stands up off his lap.
"I'm gonna...go."
"Perhaps I misjudged my own abilities to override biological impulses."
"Yeah?"
He looks at her, eyes all earnest or whatever, she can't pinpoint it.
"Yeah."
"Cool."
She heads for the door, pausing as he says her name.
"In case you were curious, I've already explained the flaw in my theory," he's got that crazy look in his eyes still. "I forgot to account for emotional influences."
A smile takes over face and she immediately flinches as she realizes her lips are a little raw. Wow, that happened.
The next time she sees Coop, he's standing to the right of Sheldon at the altar. He says in his speech at the reception that he knew in the car on the way back to the airport that she had feelings for his brother. She makes her own speech and tells Coop he knew before her. Sheldon, for the first time in his life, admits he was the last to know.
&&.