Chapter Text
Knock, knock, knock, Penny?
Knock, knock, knock, Penny?
Knock, knock, knock, Penny?
‘What’s up, buttercup?’ Penny said drowsily as she leaned against her door.
‘You should brush your teeth before bed. Dental hygiene should not be neglected.’ Sheldon could smell what had to be last night’s chardonnay and a chimichanga.
‘That’s what you woke me for on a Saturday, Sheldon?’
‘No, I woke you to see if you would drive me to the train exhibition at the LA Convention Center. It is supposed to be quite remarkable. There are quite a number of displays and rather exciting collector’s pieces to see. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. They even have a replica of Richard Trevithick’s first steam engine.’ The Cornish inventor’s revolutionary steam engine, alone, was reason enough to go.
‘Trains? You woke me for trains?’ Penny ushered her quirky and at times like this exasperating neighbor into her apartment. ‘I suppose I can take you if you can help me with the chemistry class I’m taking. They want an experiment creating an exodermic relation, something like that.’ Penny hoped Sheldon was in a mood to be helpful instead of sarcastic.
Sheldon looked like he was in pain for a moment. ‘I will assume they want some type of explosive reaction?’
‘Yeah, I figured Leonard’s crazy bomb stuff would be a good example.’ Penny invited Sheldon in for some tea.
The fastidious Texan shivered as he cleared his favored spot of last night’s clothing judging by the similarity of smell on the clothes and Penny’s breathe. ‘I believe the term you want is an exothermic reaction, Penny. Wouldn’t it make more sense to ask Leonard about his dismal attempt at rocket fuel?’
‘Only, if I want him trying to ask me out on another date. I have no interest in trying any Beta, Gamma, Delta, or Epsilonging trial runs.’ Penny brought Sheldon his tea and sat herself down on the couch with her coffee.
Sheldon laughed at Penny’s pun. ‘Well done, college has managed to teach you some Greek. Was this from cruising frat row?’ Sheldon wondered where Penny had been last night since she arrived much later than she normally would have.
‘Sheldon, if you want to cruise to the train exhibit, you better put some cruise control on your life observations of me.’ Penny rolled her eyes at Sheldon’s fascination for her night life. ‘Why don’t you try coming out with me some time since my nights interest you so much? You might even manage to have some fun.’
‘I believe our ideas of fun are quite different, Penny, but in the interest of going to the exhibit, I will refrain from elaborating. As for the formula to that ridiculous experiment, it is simple enough but it is dangerously unstable.’ Sheldon hoped there wasn’t some kind of actual lab work with the stuff.
‘Oh, I got that from how you talked about it. It’s just an example for a paper, I’m not about to touch something like that. When do you want to go to the exhibit?’
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Sheldon and Penny came back from the exhibit late in the afternoon. They got to the fourth floor and Penny invited Sheldon into 4B for a quick spaghetti dinner.
‘I would love to. It would make an excellent end to a wonderful day.’ Sheldon sat on the couch so he could use the coffee table to get out some of his finds from the seller’s room. He was especially delighted with the model of Trevithick’s engine that Penny had won for him. ‘I really cannot thank you enough for this present. I had no idea you could assemble an unknown engine from scratch so quickly.’ Penny had been in a competition to assemble an unknown model train the fastest among 30 competitors. She had done it in much less than half the allotted 30 minutes. It had set a new record for the competition, eleven minutes and four seconds.
Penny shrugged her shoulders. ‘It wasn’t any harder than a tractor, Sheldon. I wasn’t kidding when I said I put one together when I was twelve. Besides, you inspire me, sweetie.’
They made the dinner together so they could eat and talk about her chemistry class. Penny asked if there was some way to stabilize the reaction and make it a more easily regulated reaction. Sheldon thought that would be an interesting problem to work out since he had no immediate work to do, tomorrow, it would be an amusing way to while the free time.
‘It surprises me that you have such enthusiasm for chemistry and your other classes. You sounded very disinterested in such pursuits in the past.’
‘I guess it’s being around you guys and besides that school in Nebraska wasn’t very good so it was hard to be anything but bored by everything, except the guys. The football team was much more interesting.’
Sheldon rolled his eyes at the flirtatious way Penny recalled her interests. ‘Was this interest on the field or off?’
‘Both, would you like to find out, honey?’ Penny batted her eyes and leaped on Sheldon and started tickling him.
Sheldon was thrown by the flirtatious tackle and found himself pinned by Penny in a tickle fight.
‘Stop, stop, ah, stop, you treacherous vixen!’ Sheldon caught his breath from Penny’s teasing and felt strangely empty when she got off him. He got back to the chemistry before he could get confounded by the singular feelings Penny easily made him aware of ever since they first met.
‘I think I have an idea how it might be stabilized but it would still be very powerful, it might even have practical applications, hmm.’ Sheldon got excited by the conundrum Penny had posed to him.
‘That sounds like the bomb. Hey, the spaghetti is ready, let’s eat.’ Penny got some tea for Sheldon and promised him just a single glass of her favorite chardonnay, tonight.
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Leonard came home to find Sheldon working at his usual white board but on that old rocket fuel formula instead of his usual research. ‘Hey, buddy, what’s up with that disaster?’
‘Penny and I were discussing her chemistry class and she posed an interesting challenge, could the fuel be stabilized? It is an intriguing problem.’
Leonard looked at the board but it wasn’t on his mind. ‘What is Penny interested in chemistry for? She’s an actress, a wannabe actress at that.’
‘It’s wanting to be an actress that has encouraged her to expand her capacities. It is something to be encouraged, something which you seldom did, Leonard.’
‘Hey, I encouraged Penny! That’s all I did and what did I get for all that effort, a break up.’ Leonard snorted in frustration.
‘You encouraged her to give up her psychics and astrology; you encouraged her to abandon school because she had too many eager lab partners. Basically, you encouraged her to give up anything that took time away from you and your interests, in particular, your interest in coitus with her.’ Sheldon kept working without looking at Leonard. This conversation had replayed many times in Sheldon’s mind when Leonard was bemoaning his break up with their neighbor which was daily.
‘Hey, you ragged on that stuff plenty, man.’ Leonard could never figure out why Penny put up with Sheldon’s crap but would go ballistic on him.
‘It was always quite different. I don’t believe in such hokum and explained to Penny my reasons many times. I never told her she shouldn’t enjoy it out of her own interest just as she has never discouraged my interest in Battlestar Galactica, for example, in spite of having no interest in it and finding it quite boring herself.’ Sheldon had a hard time believing he was explaining emotional reactions to Leonard but Leonard was more myopic about his own motivations than his eyesight was capable of seeing well beyond his own hands.
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The next week, Penny drove Sheldon to work in the morning. She walked in to his office to pick up the fuel formula that Sheldon had finished. They talked about it for a while and Penny ran through the paper she was writing to look for anything she might have overlooked.
‘This is excellent work, Penny. I am sure you will get an outstanding grade on this. How is something like this supposed to help you be an actress, though?’
‘It’s not, Moonpie, but stuff like this is useful in special effects. I keep getting crap roles so I figured I might try some other things. The last show I tried out for, the costume department folks saw my Penny Blossoms online and asked if I could do some jewelry designs for them. It made me think I should try some other stuff besides acting.’
Sheldon nodded at the wisdom of that. ‘That is superb lateral thinking, Penny, and only my Meemaw calls me Moonpie.’
Penny smirked at that and gave Sheldon a hug good bye. Since it was new comic day and she didn’t have a shift at the Cheese Cake Factory, she offered to take Sheldon to the comic store after work. Sheldon agreed and suggested they get Thai food together before returning to the apartment for Halo night. He wanted to do something extra for the wonderful train she’d won for him.
‘That sound’s great, Sheldon, I’d love that.’ She gave Sheldon a warm hug that he found himself returning very unexpectedly. Penny went out but returned about a half hour later.
‘Hey, Sheldon, I found this quiz in the parking lot. I tried figuring out some of the questions but it’s over my head. It looks like a lot of physics and engineering questions for some kind of game, maybe? Maybe, you guys would like to try it?’
Sheldon looked down the list of questions and a number of them were intriguing challenges. ‘This is quite a fascinating discovery. It will make an excellent lunchtime conundrum for the table, thank you!’
Penny threw out a bit of a challenge. ‘I built that train in less than twelve minutes; do you think you guys could answer all those questions in twelve minutes?’
Sheldon looked at the list, physics, ballistics, chemistry, engineering, and metallurgy nothing that Sheldon and the guys couldn’t handle. ‘I believe we can as a team, yes. What do I win when we succeed?’
‘Pretty sure of yourself? I’ll buy you the comics of your choice, today, Sheldon, and I’ll throw in one spaceship model for you. You have to film the whole quiz being done.’
Sheldon liked the sound of Penny’s terms. ‘Agreed.’
Penny gave Sheldon a quick kiss on the cheek and ran out with a happy good bye and good luck.
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The guys finished the quiz in eleven and a half minutes. Sheldon texted Penny with the video file for her perusal and said she could pick him up for his victory shopping at 5pm. Penny texted back with a smiley face and a kiss emoji to say she’d be there.
‘I will be going to the comic store with Penny this evening so I will not need a ride Leonard.’ Sheldon got up to return to his office with the quiz to give to Penny.
‘You guys are spending a lot of time together, what’s up with that, Sheldon?’ Leonard’s jealousy was obvious even to the Texan.
‘We are spending no more time together than we usually do. We have always enjoyed each other’s company even before you started dating Penny. Apart from attempts to have sex with her, you rarely spent any time with Penny, unlike me. I enjoy spending time with her for herself not what she can provide as a partner for coitus.’
Leonard growled but Sheldon walked away before he could take exception to Sheldon’s comment.
‘Wow, Sheldon’s like a new man, lately.’ Howard was impressed by the way the Shelbot defended Penny so readily.
‘Yeah, dude, do you think Sheldon and Penny are a thing, now?’ Raj had speculated privately when that might happen.
Leonard gagged at that. ‘They can’t be a thing, I called dibs on her.’
‘I don’t know, he doesn’t sound like his usual Vulcan self. And what is with these quizzes and chemistry things he’s doing lately? If I didn’t know better, I’d think he’s had that lab accident and he’s building some kind of doomsday machine.’ Howard was curious because that list of questions did imply a few scary possibilities involving bombs and rockets.
‘Maybe he’s just helping Penny with her classes? He keeps finding this stuff with her.’ Raj had taken note that Sheldon was always working on this stuff with Penny so school work seemed the likely reason.
‘Penny using stuff like that quiz? Come on, we’re talking about a z-list actress one step away from being a porn star with that Serial Apeist thing.’
‘Dude, that’s low.’ Raj picked up his lunch and said he was going to finish eating in his office.
Howard chided Leonard; too, ‘You say porn star like it’s a bad thing. What’s wrong with you?’ Howard picked up his lunch and called to Raj that he’d be joining him.
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The following weeks were filled with discussion about a UFO spotted in the Pasadena hills. There was speculation that it was a secret test flight of something from JPL. At the apartment, Howard wasn’t so sure since they didn’t have security there for flight tests to stay hidden and something like that would be tested at someplace more secure like an air force base. Raj thought it might be some kind of missile test instead of a plane. The flights were all very short and whatever the object was it was too small to stay on radar accurately. Leonard thought it might be some kind of drone since it stayed fairly low and easily dropped from radar screens. Sheldon refused to speculate thinking the whole thing was probably just a hoax.
‘Come on, there have been too many sightings for it to be a hoax. Even JPL is curious since they have confirmed radar sightings to the press.’ Howard wasn’t buying a hoax angle. The thing was too fast for some home built rocket for it to be a hoax. Raj was with Howard as was Leonard.
‘What would be the use of buzzing around Pasadena? Is someone trying out an air born pizza delivery service?’ Sheldon felt the flights couldn’t serve any purpose since they were too short to serve a use and too irregular in timing and always at night. Hardly, a good time for observation of experimental results.
Sheldon felt he’d spent enough time on fruitless speculations and went to bed.
‘I have a crazy thought, what if it’s Sheldon?’ Howard looked earnestly at his pals. ‘Look at the facts, he did all that rocket fuel stuff, he got us to do that crazy quiz of science, and he keeps going all over the place with Penny? I know they are friends but she wouldn’t be driving Sheldon around everywhere unless Sheldon was doing something big and she’d never ask questions about Sheldon’s science stuff like we would.’
Leonard laughed at that. ‘Come on, you think Sheldon is building some kind of secret rocket system?’
Raj thought about it some more and weighed the idea. ‘What do we know about Sheldon after he goes to bed? No one goes in his room. He could go out the window and no one would ever know or suspect. And, whatever it is, it always flies at night after Sheldon’s bedtime.’
Leonard looked at his friends in disbelief. ‘You guys are crazy. Sheldon building secret rockets?’
Howard nodded. ‘That’s a guy who was building real laser weapons and a working nuclear pile before he was ten.’
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The following morning Sheldon got up to watch Doctor Who promptly at 6am to prepare for its 6:15 start time. While getting ready, his keen Vulcan hearing heard a staggered walk on the fourth floor steps and some colorful curses from Penny. He put down his cereal to see what was wrong with his neighbor. Penny was limping heavily favoring her right leg.
‘Penny, what has happened to you? Surely, you should be going to a hospital in this condition, not climbing four flights of stairs.’ Sheldon helped Penny up the last flight coaxing her to go back down.
‘It’s fine, Sheldon. I was out clubbing and just turned my ankle a bit. It’s just tender going up this many stairs.’ Penny took Sheldon’s arm gratefully. ‘Isn’t this Doctor Who time for you?’
‘Yes, but the show doesn’t start for another seven minutes. Perhaps, you can come in and watch it with me and I can put some ice on your ankle?’ Sheldon held out his free hand to the open 4A doorway.
Penny thought about it and figured it was a good idea. ‘OK, Sheldon, if I can get a bowl of whatever you’re eating. I’m starved.’
‘Of course, let’s get you on the couch and your feet elevated.’
‘Oh, honey, you do know how to sweet talk a girl.’ Penny teased Sheldon and gave his tummy a rub.
Sheldon rolled his eyes at Penny’s flirting and got her settled on the couch with a pillow to elevate her injured foot more along with an ice pack. He got another bowl of cereal for his hungry neighbor and they got down to the Doctor’s latest adventure. Sheldon did notice that Penny’s breath didn’t smell like wine which was odd after a night of clubbing. He hoped it was a sign she was cutting back on the amount of alcohol she was imbibing.
Leonard got up just as the end credits were finishing and was surprised to see Penny. ‘Hey, Penny, you’re over early, today.’
‘Sheldon invited me in for Doctor Who.’ Penny leaned into Sheldon and gave him a hug.
Leonard looked at the two and squinted his eyes with a hint of jealousy. ‘When did you two start being Doctor Who fans together?’
Sheldon sighed in resignation having to explain the obvious to his roommate. ‘Ever since Penny came up the stairs with the injured ankle that is elevated and being iced on the table as we speak. Perhaps, you should have your morning coffee before trying to engage in conversation?’
‘What? Penny you should get to a hospital if your ankle is like that. I can drive you right now.’ Leonard started to head for his room to get dressed.
‘That’s fine, Sheldon is a great doctor. I just needed to get off it for a while.’ Penny got up and felt fairly steady while taking a few deliberate steps. ‘Just the same, would you mind coming over and helping set me up with a little more ‘elevation’, Moonpie?’
Sheldon snorted at the bawdy way Penny made that sound. ‘Only my Meemaw calls me Moonpie, Mae West, and I will be glad to help.’
Leonard looked nonplussed at the banter between Sheldon and Penny and grumbled his way over to the coffee maker.
Sheldon and Penny went back to 4B where Penny wanted to get to bed. Sheldon helped her off with her shoes and pants, those without looking. Maybe a peak to be sure her ankle wasn’t jostled in the process. He left her to take a short shower and get herself into her scant version of pajamas. When she was settled into bed, Sheldon put another pack on her ankle and made sure she was comfortable.
‘I am glad you didn’t seem to have drunk much last night. It is a dangerous habit to drink and drive as you do.’ Sheldon always found his sleep easier when he heard Penny’s car returning from her party nights. He wondered why he never noticed the sounds when Leonard or Howard would be driving back from a failed quest to pick up girls.
‘Oh, yeah, I played designated driver last night. Funny, I was the one to get hurt.’ Penny gave a laugh and asked for some water.
Sheldon got Penny her water and sang her a few rounds of soft kitty. She had to be quite tired because Sheldon heard Penny’s deep REM sleep breathing start in the middle of the third round. He sat watching his neighbor for a few minutes thinking about why he paid so much attention towards her. It was a surprisingly more complicated problem than he realized and it could not be answered simply or easily.
Almost from the beginning he took note of her comings and goings, times, people, activities. He had been astonished at her casualness towards laundry when she joined his laundry time on Saturday. Somehow, it had proceeded rapidly from annoyance with the unexpected company to looking forward to her arrival. He had been annoyed with her mooching yet he never insisted she stop with any force but had rather made it a game of outwitting her latest attempts or developing sarcastic commentary on her raids with tea and other beverages in to-go-cups with prices for the contents. She was puzzlement incarnate. In the end, he decided, however he felt about Penny, he needed to be here for her today so she could rest her ankle. He went back to 4A to get his laptop so he could work and be nearby if Penny needed any assistance.
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Leonard looked up from his breakfast when Sheldon came in, got his laptop, and headed back out the front door. ‘Are you going back over to Penny’s?’
‘Yes, I am. While she feels her ankle is doing well, she may still like to have some assistance.’
‘I can come over and help. You don’t have to change your schedule, man.’
Sheldon looked at his roommate with some resignation thinking Needy Baby, Greedy Baby, indeed. ‘There is no need for that, Penny is sleeping, now. This will be no great change to my schedule, anyway, and nothing she wouldn’t do in the same circumstance for me.’ Even Sheldon could tell Leonard’s frustration with the break up was still sitting heavily with him.
‘How does she put up with your finicky ways when she won’t even give me the time of day?’ Leonard was in a full sulk talking more to his food than to his roommate.
Sheldon’s Vulcan hearing picked up the sullen whisper. ‘That may be because I assist her without ulterior motive while your assistance is to garner a sense of obligation from her to have sex with you, Leonard, just as your offer to me to help keep my schedule uninterrupted was really meant to gain access to Penny’s apartment and attempt to coax her sympathies.’
Leonard got irritated at that characterization of his efforts. ‘I’ve never done anything like that and also Penny has always been into me. Besides, I called dibs, roomie and best friend.’
Sheldon looked tiredly at his ‘best’ friend who had almost sabotaged his career and his reputation so he could get back home faster and try to get together with Penny. ‘Clearly, Penny doesn’t think so since she broke up with you and refuses any further overtures from you. As to your dibs, Penny is free to date anyone she cares to without regard to your desires. Furthermore, you have no entitlement to say who I may show any romantic interest in.’
Sheldon didn’t wait to listen to any angry retorts. He walked out of 4A and quietly slipped back into Penny’s apartment. He connected up his laptop and sat down in the easy chair that had become his 4B spot. He paid no notice to the laptop for over an hour while he was preoccupied with his final retort to Leonard. It was a consideration that hadn’t entered his earlier thinking about his feelings for Penny.
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