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When she was six years old Penny talked her parents into letting her adopt a stray cat with a mangled ear and a missing eye. Her name was Buttons, and she was both skittish and particular. There was only one window in the whole farmhouse where it would lounge in the sun because it was the only one where it could see something besides a row of hedges or the outside wall of the barn. It would attack anything that approached from its blind side. At dinner time she would only eat the diamond and cross shaped pieces out of her kibble, and she always had to be served at the exact same moment as the family dinner dishes were brought to the table.
No matter how many times that cat scratched her (and there had been scratches a-plenty—including some that became scars), Penny had always done everything she could to accommodate that damn cat. By the time she was ten dealing with Buttons’ weird quirks had grown so second nature that she genuinely forgot to warn people what they needed to do to keep from being scratched themselves. It had led to a couple of nasty incidents, but she and the cat had been the best of friends for years.
The longer she lived across the hall from the Sheldon Cooper, the more she thought about Buttons.
It was a little crazy how easily she folded him into her life. She had his drink and hamburger order perfect after only two Tuesdays of him frequenting The Cheesecake Factory. She knew his weirdo laundry schedule, the way he prioritized his grocery lists, and the exact time he used the bathroom in the mornings. She’d genuinely tried to forget that last, but something about Sheldon related knowledge always stuck in her mind. Probably the sheer insanity.
Still, no amount of getting used to his insanity prepared her for the moment she walked into her apartment after a late shift and found him sprawled out on her couch. There was shadow on his jaw, which was extra weird given that he shaved every morning, and she thought there might be a chance that he was wearing the same t-shirt he’d had on the previous day.
“Sheldon?” she asked quietly, easing the door shut behind her. He blinked, but otherwise didn’t move. “Sweetie, how’d you get in here?”
“I’m the smartest man alive, Penny.” He sounded morose. “Picking a lock isn’t outside the realm of possibility.”
She tossed her purse and keys onto the table by the day. “Okay. Let’s try again. Why are you in here?”
“Leonard is engaging in another ill-advised relationship built on sexual congress that has caused me to be pushed from my home.”
With a frown, Penny kicked off her shoes and put that through her Sheldon-to-English filter. “Leonard kicked you out for a booty call?”
“Isn’t that what I just said?” Sheldon frowned and finally turned to look at her. Now that she could look him full in the face she could see circles under his eyes. “I have been relegated to the position of the family dog getting pushed into the backyard for making a mess on the carpet.”
“How long have you been out of the apartment?”
Sheldon shook his wrist, brought his watch up in front of his face, and blinked blearily at the numbers on its face. “Thirty-seven hours, eighteen minutes, and forty-two seconds.”
Something in Penny snapped a little bit. She’d been that crappy roommate a couple of times when she was young and stupid, but she’d had that roommate way more often. She stomped through the apartment to her linen closet and pulled out her softest blankets. By the time she was draping it over his sprawled form she’d worked herself into a nice rant about how friends were supposed to treat friends when they lived together. Surprisingly, Sheldon let her rant without interruption, sitting up just long enough to remove his shoes and line them up beside her coffee table. He must have been completely exhausted not to have some sort of commentary.
Her hypothesis was proven when she stood up after tucking the blanket around his legs and found him fast asleep.
~*~*~*~*~*~
It was well before eleven when Penny woke up the next morning to strange sounds coming from her living room and kitchen. She peeked around the edge of her bedroom doorway and tracked the tall, gangly figure moving around her apartment. He was between her kitchen island and the stove, moving with a practiced ease. With a quick glance around she confirmed that his shoes were still lined up beside the coffee table. At some point he must have gotten warm because even though he was clearly still dressed in his t-shirt the long-sleeved shirt he’d worn under it was draped over the back of the couch. Actually, once she was looking she saw that his belt was there as well.
Her brain fizzled just a bit. Sheldon in his flannel pjs was one thing. Hell, even Sheldon naked wasn’t as strange as the idea of Sheldon only partially dressed. She shook the thought from her head, stumbled out of bed, and threw on her robe, making sure all her lady bits were appropriately covered before she made her way out into the living room.
Sheldon, it turned out, was cooking breakfast. Her fridge hadn’t exactly been well stocked, but it seemed like he’d managed to find enough to make something that smelled fantastic. She made her way across the room and leaned against the island. “Whatcha doing over there, Doctor Whackadoodle?” she asked around a bit of a yawn. He jumped a couple of inches, eyes wide as he turned to face her.
“Penny! It’s not eleven o’clock.” From the looks of things, he’d be covering his throat if he weren’t holding a spatula in one hand and a pan of more savory egg scramble than one person could eat alone in the other. “You’re not supposed to be up yet. Breakfast isn’t finished.”
She looked him over from head to toe, surprised to find her heart thumping as she took him in. He was rumpled, trousers hanging low on his hips and wrinkles in his Green Lantern shirt. The vague shadow on his jaw from the night before was growing ever closer to full on stubble. His eyes were clear and bright, no longer red and bruised from exhaustion. On top of all that, he was making her breakfast.
When did Sheldon Cooper become more attractive than every guy she’d ever dated?
Coffee. She clearly needed coffee. When she edged around him to the coffee pot it was already brewing a fresh pot. He’d made coffee even though he’d never drink it. He was already back at the stove, shaking the scramble over a burner with single-minded intensity. She slid behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Just let this happen, Sheldon,” she muttered into the space between his shoulder blades when he let out a squeak of protest. He relaxed just a fraction.
“Penny, is there a social protocol I am misunderstanding here?”
She gave him a slight squeeze. “Sometimes people just need to show affection, sweetie.”
“Oh.” For a few moments, the only sound in the apartment was the spatula scraping through the pan. “Is this affection like when my mom hugs me and says she still cares about me even though I’m crazier than a chicken in a bin of dried corn?”
“Sheldon, when a girl wants to hug you first thing in the morning while you’re cooking her breakfast, I promise it’s not because she thinks about you the same way your mother does.”