fic; TBBT: As the Games were Starting.
title: As the Games were Starting.
fandom: The Big Bang Theory.
pairing: Penny/Sheldon, but also Raj/Howard (not a lot, but sort of, yes!)
rating: PG.
words: 1865.
disclaimer: Fiction. I don't even know any real-life scientists, so.
notes: Oh man, I really thought I was done with BBT, just because I haven't been feeling the show lately? But then some stuff happened in that fandom and there was a party post and I decided to write a party fic(let) for it, but then livejournal's comment limits were RUINING MY LIFE. And oh god, this is actually pretty short, but it's more than a ficlet? But more importantly: this is Super Fluff with a helping of the Sort of Forced to Make Out trope.
Penny's not the old Penny any more. The old Penny is still in Nebraska, still hanging around with the people she went to high school with, still working at the Cheesecake Factory at the center of town.
(Well, all right, some things are the same, but, come on -- Rome wasn't built in a day. And she actually knows and understands that expression now, so that's something, too.)
But the main difference is: Penny doesn't party any more. Sure, she, like, goes to parties and she has a few drinks and sometimes she gets a little tipsy and a little flirty, but that's not old Penny partying. That's not a puke-and-rally, peeing in an alley, smeared mascara, where's my shirt kind of night. That's not running across Memorial Stadium in her underwear at dawn while the Huskers' offensive line whistles from the end zone.
Sometimes the new Penny doesn't even need a party to have fun, which: old Penny thinks that's ridiculous.
But old Penny never saw an apartment full of freakishly intelligent scientists try to limbo under a light saber either, so her fun meter needs calculating -- no -- caliber -- calibrating? -- fixing.
In new Penny's universe, it should be a regular Saturday -- maybe out at a concert, maybe getting cocktails, but probably just in Leonard and Sheldon's apartment eating takeout and watching the DVD commentary on some outer space show.
Instead, it's a Saturday night full of things old and new Penny outgrew at 15.
Things that were apparently an, "integral and formative part of the maturation experience," and things that boy geniuses don't get to experience for a bunch of reasons Penny can't relate to in the slightest.
This is how new Penny, now Penny, right-this-minute Penny ends up tour guiding her four best friends (yep, said that) through an adolescent sleepover.
Half of this stuff, it's stuff no one Penny knows ever even did at sleepovers, but it's on the agenda -- they really did limbo, for example.
The other half -- it's warped versions of, like, real life things. Howard stole a pair of Sheldon's underwear, got it all wet and put it in the freezer. Sheldon retaliated by freezing Howard's overnight bag.
With liquid nitrogen.
(Raj gleefully shattered it, too -- and then the apartment smelled vaguely of brisket for a while.)
So far they've:
Had a Doritos eating contest (Leonard used Fritos instead and then basically unhinged his jaw to win)
Fucked around on Chat Roulette (Sheldon OK'd this as a substitution for an AOL chat room after giving an impassioned speech about how AOL was 'substandard' and blah, blah, blah)
Talked about girls (awkward)
And traded comics (less awkward, more boring).
Penny's not allowed to look at the agenda, in fact, no one but Sheldon is -- it's supposed to add to the "organic fluidity" of the night -- but she's hoping for makeovers (she's got an eye shadow that would accent the electric blue of Howard's pants nicely).
What she gets instead of makeovers is Spin the Bottle.
In a room where she's the only girl.
This is why someone should've intervened when Sheldon decided to plan the whole thing based on, like, pop culture and things he's learned from the internet.
Leonard immediately puts up a fight -- and a loud one. Like, impressively loud. It's not that their break up was bad, it's just -- they broke up. She doesn't need to make out with him again. And she's pretty sure he doesn't need to see her making out with someone else -- not because she's arrogant, but because she doesn't want to see him make out with anyone either. There's, you know, rules about break ups.
She also doesn't need to make out with anyone else in the room.
(Except she maybe needs to make out with Sheldon, just once, just because she's thought about it before. Because he's built all lean and tall and sometimes, when he's not being rude, he's sweet in his own way? Or because he's not unattractive and pickings are slim? Or because she's curious in a scientific way?
Or because you don't get to pick who you think about making out with -- you just, like, think about it?
It's probably that last one.)
Leonard loses the fight though -- and she can tell from the way they're looking at her that Raj and Howard are counting on the bottle just landing on her.
The first spin goes 100% the best way it could've gone:
Howard spins and it lands on Raj.
The backpedaling, oh god, the backpedaling. Raj is just making angry, muted noises (no booze at a teenage sleepover), but Howard -- Howard is in rare form.
He calmly checks his strike count with Sheldon, but he's at two and the reset course now requires a physical education credit that no one's anxious to learn about.
Then he pretends his phone is ringing.
Sheldon tells him, all disapproving, that, despite Apple's advances in cellular phone technology, no company has yet found a way to allow for a phone to still function following both a blast from liquid nitrogen and a forceful shattering.
Or something like that.
Then he brings Bernadette into things, but Leonard helpfully announces that just last week, he'd overheard Bernadette telling Howard that if he ever wanted to "explore his feelings" with Raj, it was OK by her.
(She'd told Penny this same thing once -- and it was awkward because Bernadette seemed, like, into it, actually.)
Then he says he has to go home, but apparently that breaks the contract they all signed at the beginning of this whole thing. (Penny had signed her name as Holly Golightly, just in case.)
What's left is for Howard to kiss Raj or be forever exiled from the group, basically.
The weirdest part is how, once Howard finally gives in and accepts it, Raj does, too.
Howard clumsily crawls over to where Raj is sitting on the floor and Penny has a vision of how that crawl would've looked if the bottle had landed on her. She pictures some growling or, like, purring.
Raj leans forward just the slightest bit as Howard twists his face, exaggeratedly puckering his lips.
There's a split second though, before they kiss, where Penny watches that drop and he's just Howard, looking at Raj, and Raj is looking back at him.
The kiss lasts Sheldon's prescribed five Mississippi's, but Penny can see that they've both parted their lips -- only barely, but it's there. And then there's a beat, like a pause, before Howard pulls away. Raj's mouth looks just a little bit wet in the light and the room is so fucking quiet that Penny immediately feels like a voyeur, like she's been caught doing something she shouldn't have -- and she didn't even do anything.
She catches Leonard's eye and gives him a look. She's trying to get across: You better say something before Sheldon makes this worse.
For a change, Leonard actually understands her.
He grabs for the bottle and says, maybe a little too loudly, "My turn!"
(Raj and Howard both jump and don't look at each other for a while.)
Leonard spins the bottle and Penny's still too wrapped up into the fact that Howard and Raj -- uh, well, yeah, what? -- to pay attention. Even without whatever mental notme-notme-notme chanting she was going to do, it doesn't land on her. It actually lands -- right back on Leonard.
Sheldon consults his notebook, like it's going to have instructions on how to proceed (back in the day, Penny's friends played this as a respin -- a fact she will not be volunteering), but doesn't seem to find anything. He improvises and makes Leonard kiss himself.
Leonard kisses his hand dramatically and shoots a smug look to Howard, who immediately looks at the floor.
Penny elbows hard into Leonard's side and Raj gives her a small smile.
What the fuck.
And of course she's up next. She has a brief thought that maybe it'll land on Raj, just so those two can get their footing back, but she kind of knew it was going to land on Sheldon.
(She maybe knew a trick with her wrist in high school, to make it stop where she wanted to and she maybe subconsciously did it. The same part of her subconscious that uncontrollably once or twice thought about kissing him. It's all subconscious, OK? Jeez.)
Unexpectedly, Sheldon claps his hands in delight. Everyone, Penny included, turns to look at him.
"I was concerned that I wouldn't get the full experience were I not to participate firsthand in the festivities," he says by way of explanation.
What does that even mean?
As a side effect of all this though, Howard and Raj have gotten their footing back. They're both leering at Penny in a way that's unnerving enough that she's forgotten how she felt bad for them a few minutes ago.
Like, OK, she really did wonder about kissing Sheldon -- but in a vague, alternate universe way. Not in a way where she'd have to do it front of everybody, not in a way where she'd --
Sheldon's mouth is on hers.
Sheldon is kissing her.
In the background, she can hear Leonard say something, but it's drowned out by Howard's enthusiastic counting.
At the third Mississippi, she stops hearing anything and, well, she kisses Sheldon back.
His lips are smooth, like Chapstick smooth, which makes sense, it's Sheldon and although his top lip is thin, she's able to get his bottom one right between hers. She pulls at it just slightly and then Sheldon -- he readjusts.
Sheldon tilts his head and his mouth opens just the tiniest bit more and Penny doesn't know why it happens (subconscious), but she sweeps her tongue out into the opening. He yields and then, holy shit, her tongue is in Sheldon's mouth.
Penny's somehow got her hands up on his shoulders -- no, but, really, when did that happen? -- and she feels him jump. She's concerned for a second that maybe he's never, like, kissed anyone before -- which seems ridiculous at what, 27? 28? but maybe that happens? -- when he slides his tongue against hers. Smoothly.
Yeah, this isn't his first rodeo.
She's leaning forward, leaning into things, when Leonard yells out. "Five! Five Mississipi! FIVE."
Penny pulls back automatically and opens her eyes just in time to see Sheldon's mouth chase after hers.
Leonard says it again, "Five!"
And then Sheldon shakes his head and she's kind of secretly pleased, like he had to shake it off -- like she knocked Sheldon Cooper off his game. He sits back down and Penny realizes they'd both moved up on to their knees (oh, this is not going to end well) before pulling out his notebook and pen, crossing something off as he speaks.
"The next item on the agenda is makeovers," and he snaps the book shut.
Despite the amount of concealer she ends up using on Howard, she still has enough to cover a hickey the next morning. Which is lucky.
&&.
fandom: The Big Bang Theory.
pairing: Penny/Sheldon, but also Raj/Howard (not a lot, but sort of, yes!)
rating: PG.
words: 1865.
disclaimer: Fiction. I don't even know any real-life scientists, so.
notes: Oh man, I really thought I was done with BBT, just because I haven't been feeling the show lately? But then some stuff happened in that fandom and there was a party post and I decided to write a party fic(let) for it, but then livejournal's comment limits were RUINING MY LIFE. And oh god, this is actually pretty short, but it's more than a ficlet? But more importantly: this is Super Fluff with a helping of the Sort of Forced to Make Out trope.
Penny's not the old Penny any more. The old Penny is still in Nebraska, still hanging around with the people she went to high school with, still working at the Cheesecake Factory at the center of town.
(Well, all right, some things are the same, but, come on -- Rome wasn't built in a day. And she actually knows and understands that expression now, so that's something, too.)
But the main difference is: Penny doesn't party any more. Sure, she, like, goes to parties and she has a few drinks and sometimes she gets a little tipsy and a little flirty, but that's not old Penny partying. That's not a puke-and-rally, peeing in an alley, smeared mascara, where's my shirt kind of night. That's not running across Memorial Stadium in her underwear at dawn while the Huskers' offensive line whistles from the end zone.
Sometimes the new Penny doesn't even need a party to have fun, which: old Penny thinks that's ridiculous.
But old Penny never saw an apartment full of freakishly intelligent scientists try to limbo under a light saber either, so her fun meter needs calculating -- no -- caliber -- calibrating? -- fixing.
In new Penny's universe, it should be a regular Saturday -- maybe out at a concert, maybe getting cocktails, but probably just in Leonard and Sheldon's apartment eating takeout and watching the DVD commentary on some outer space show.
Instead, it's a Saturday night full of things old and new Penny outgrew at 15.
Things that were apparently an, "integral and formative part of the maturation experience," and things that boy geniuses don't get to experience for a bunch of reasons Penny can't relate to in the slightest.
This is how new Penny, now Penny, right-this-minute Penny ends up tour guiding her four best friends (yep, said that) through an adolescent sleepover.
Half of this stuff, it's stuff no one Penny knows ever even did at sleepovers, but it's on the agenda -- they really did limbo, for example.
The other half -- it's warped versions of, like, real life things. Howard stole a pair of Sheldon's underwear, got it all wet and put it in the freezer. Sheldon retaliated by freezing Howard's overnight bag.
With liquid nitrogen.
(Raj gleefully shattered it, too -- and then the apartment smelled vaguely of brisket for a while.)
So far they've:
Had a Doritos eating contest (Leonard used Fritos instead and then basically unhinged his jaw to win)
Fucked around on Chat Roulette (Sheldon OK'd this as a substitution for an AOL chat room after giving an impassioned speech about how AOL was 'substandard' and blah, blah, blah)
Talked about girls (awkward)
And traded comics (less awkward, more boring).
Penny's not allowed to look at the agenda, in fact, no one but Sheldon is -- it's supposed to add to the "organic fluidity" of the night -- but she's hoping for makeovers (she's got an eye shadow that would accent the electric blue of Howard's pants nicely).
What she gets instead of makeovers is Spin the Bottle.
In a room where she's the only girl.
This is why someone should've intervened when Sheldon decided to plan the whole thing based on, like, pop culture and things he's learned from the internet.
Leonard immediately puts up a fight -- and a loud one. Like, impressively loud. It's not that their break up was bad, it's just -- they broke up. She doesn't need to make out with him again. And she's pretty sure he doesn't need to see her making out with someone else -- not because she's arrogant, but because she doesn't want to see him make out with anyone either. There's, you know, rules about break ups.
She also doesn't need to make out with anyone else in the room.
(Except she maybe needs to make out with Sheldon, just once, just because she's thought about it before. Because he's built all lean and tall and sometimes, when he's not being rude, he's sweet in his own way? Or because he's not unattractive and pickings are slim? Or because she's curious in a scientific way?
Or because you don't get to pick who you think about making out with -- you just, like, think about it?
It's probably that last one.)
Leonard loses the fight though -- and she can tell from the way they're looking at her that Raj and Howard are counting on the bottle just landing on her.
The first spin goes 100% the best way it could've gone:
Howard spins and it lands on Raj.
The backpedaling, oh god, the backpedaling. Raj is just making angry, muted noises (no booze at a teenage sleepover), but Howard -- Howard is in rare form.
He calmly checks his strike count with Sheldon, but he's at two and the reset course now requires a physical education credit that no one's anxious to learn about.
Then he pretends his phone is ringing.
Sheldon tells him, all disapproving, that, despite Apple's advances in cellular phone technology, no company has yet found a way to allow for a phone to still function following both a blast from liquid nitrogen and a forceful shattering.
Or something like that.
Then he brings Bernadette into things, but Leonard helpfully announces that just last week, he'd overheard Bernadette telling Howard that if he ever wanted to "explore his feelings" with Raj, it was OK by her.
(She'd told Penny this same thing once -- and it was awkward because Bernadette seemed, like, into it, actually.)
Then he says he has to go home, but apparently that breaks the contract they all signed at the beginning of this whole thing. (Penny had signed her name as Holly Golightly, just in case.)
What's left is for Howard to kiss Raj or be forever exiled from the group, basically.
The weirdest part is how, once Howard finally gives in and accepts it, Raj does, too.
Howard clumsily crawls over to where Raj is sitting on the floor and Penny has a vision of how that crawl would've looked if the bottle had landed on her. She pictures some growling or, like, purring.
Raj leans forward just the slightest bit as Howard twists his face, exaggeratedly puckering his lips.
There's a split second though, before they kiss, where Penny watches that drop and he's just Howard, looking at Raj, and Raj is looking back at him.
The kiss lasts Sheldon's prescribed five Mississippi's, but Penny can see that they've both parted their lips -- only barely, but it's there. And then there's a beat, like a pause, before Howard pulls away. Raj's mouth looks just a little bit wet in the light and the room is so fucking quiet that Penny immediately feels like a voyeur, like she's been caught doing something she shouldn't have -- and she didn't even do anything.
She catches Leonard's eye and gives him a look. She's trying to get across: You better say something before Sheldon makes this worse.
For a change, Leonard actually understands her.
He grabs for the bottle and says, maybe a little too loudly, "My turn!"
(Raj and Howard both jump and don't look at each other for a while.)
Leonard spins the bottle and Penny's still too wrapped up into the fact that Howard and Raj -- uh, well, yeah, what? -- to pay attention. Even without whatever mental notme-notme-notme chanting she was going to do, it doesn't land on her. It actually lands -- right back on Leonard.
Sheldon consults his notebook, like it's going to have instructions on how to proceed (back in the day, Penny's friends played this as a respin -- a fact she will not be volunteering), but doesn't seem to find anything. He improvises and makes Leonard kiss himself.
Leonard kisses his hand dramatically and shoots a smug look to Howard, who immediately looks at the floor.
Penny elbows hard into Leonard's side and Raj gives her a small smile.
What the fuck.
And of course she's up next. She has a brief thought that maybe it'll land on Raj, just so those two can get their footing back, but she kind of knew it was going to land on Sheldon.
(She maybe knew a trick with her wrist in high school, to make it stop where she wanted to and she maybe subconsciously did it. The same part of her subconscious that uncontrollably once or twice thought about kissing him. It's all subconscious, OK? Jeez.)
Unexpectedly, Sheldon claps his hands in delight. Everyone, Penny included, turns to look at him.
"I was concerned that I wouldn't get the full experience were I not to participate firsthand in the festivities," he says by way of explanation.
What does that even mean?
As a side effect of all this though, Howard and Raj have gotten their footing back. They're both leering at Penny in a way that's unnerving enough that she's forgotten how she felt bad for them a few minutes ago.
Like, OK, she really did wonder about kissing Sheldon -- but in a vague, alternate universe way. Not in a way where she'd have to do it front of everybody, not in a way where she'd --
Sheldon's mouth is on hers.
Sheldon is kissing her.
In the background, she can hear Leonard say something, but it's drowned out by Howard's enthusiastic counting.
At the third Mississippi, she stops hearing anything and, well, she kisses Sheldon back.
His lips are smooth, like Chapstick smooth, which makes sense, it's Sheldon and although his top lip is thin, she's able to get his bottom one right between hers. She pulls at it just slightly and then Sheldon -- he readjusts.
Sheldon tilts his head and his mouth opens just the tiniest bit more and Penny doesn't know why it happens (subconscious), but she sweeps her tongue out into the opening. He yields and then, holy shit, her tongue is in Sheldon's mouth.
Penny's somehow got her hands up on his shoulders -- no, but, really, when did that happen? -- and she feels him jump. She's concerned for a second that maybe he's never, like, kissed anyone before -- which seems ridiculous at what, 27? 28? but maybe that happens? -- when he slides his tongue against hers. Smoothly.
Yeah, this isn't his first rodeo.
She's leaning forward, leaning into things, when Leonard yells out. "Five! Five Mississipi! FIVE."
Penny pulls back automatically and opens her eyes just in time to see Sheldon's mouth chase after hers.
Leonard says it again, "Five!"
And then Sheldon shakes his head and she's kind of secretly pleased, like he had to shake it off -- like she knocked Sheldon Cooper off his game. He sits back down and Penny realizes they'd both moved up on to their knees (oh, this is not going to end well) before pulling out his notebook and pen, crossing something off as he speaks.
"The next item on the agenda is makeovers," and he snaps the book shut.
Despite the amount of concealer she ends up using on Howard, she still has enough to cover a hickey the next morning. Which is lucky.
&&.