Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.)
--- ts eliot, the love song of j. alfred prufrock
(If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it
And what's more - you'll be a man, my son!)
--- rudyard kipling, if
====================
Monday, September 21, 2009.
====================
It seems like everything important starts with three knocks on the door and "Penny. Penny. Penny."
But this time Penny was obviously making a spirited attempt at climbing into Leonard's mouth, and the traitor in question certainly had his hands on her waist just a moment ago, and the whole scene is so upsetting and wrong that it almost distracts Sheldon from his purpose.
I realize that you are currently at the mercy of your primitive biological urges, but as you have an entire lifetime of poor decisions ahead of you, may I interrupt this one?
Leonard has been circling Penny like a proton for two years now; strange that it should bother him now, at the end of all things.
====================
Thursday, September 24, 2009.
====================
After Sheldon comes back from Texas, he's in a subdued mood. He takes a day off work; nobody seems to care. The only thing he wants to do is curl up in bed and sulk in the dark.
Penny shows up. She opens the blinds. She yells at him. He ignores her. She sits on the edge of the bed. She yells at him in a softer voice.
Penny puts her hand on his back and rubs it gently. She tries to sing "Soft Kitty." She leaves quietly, and he falls into a fitful doze for about an hour.
She wakes him up with another hideous pie.
"I made it," she says brightly.
Sheldon sits up to get a slightly better look at it and immediately buries his head under his pillow.
"Don't be like that," Penny huffs. "I made you this lovely consolation pie, now get your head out of your butt and eat it."
Sheldon mutters something into the pillow.
"What's that? I can't hear you when you're being ungrateful."
"What kind of pie is it."
"Lovely homemade pie, look. I cut a happy smiley face in the crust and everything. The smiley face is to make you happy!"
"'Homemade' is not a subspecies of pie. 'Homemade' is not a part of pie taxonomy."
"It's cherry," Penny bites out. "Eat. A. Friggin.' Piece."
Sheldon sits up automatically because he is conditioned to respond to dangerous tones of voice in women, and not because he thinks pie is any sort of consolation for losing a Nobel Prize. Even a cherry pie.
"I don't eat strange pies, Penny. They have all sorts of alarming inconsistencies." He very politely doesn't say that this one looks like it's been dropped a few times and hastily mauled into a rough approximation of a pie shape.
"I think you ought to try this one," she says vaguely, shoving a plate of it into his face.
Sheldon flinches.
Penny's eyes narrow (have they always been so green? do eyes get greener over the summer?) and he quickly reaches for the fork.
He takes a bite. Analyzes. Takes another.
"Good?" Penny watches him eagerly, her whole face lit up with that strange Penny-light. Eyes all sparkly, hair all yellow and glowing like that.
"... Surprisingly acceptable."
Penny relaxes into a beaming smile. "I knew you'd like it."
"I didn't say I liked it," he says crossly, but manages to force down another forkful.
"Oh, yeah right. Lookit you go." Penny takes her own plate and tucks in with every sign of enjoyment.
They eat pie in companionable silence.
"Penny? How did you know about the smiley face?"
"Oh, I just thought it was something you'd like."
"You called my mother," he realizes aloud. "This is my mother's pie. You called my mother and asked her what kind of pie I would eat and she said only a cherry pie with a smiley face on top. And this is my mother's recipe!"
Penny looks uncomfortable and pleased and proud, all at once.
"Penny," he says, "That is very nearly diabolical."
Her face breaks into a grin, like the sun coming out. "Wasn't it?"
Sheldon warns, "I'm still not adequately consoled for the Nobel, though, and I never will be."
"Well, your mother mentioned something else I could try." Penny takes the plate out of his hands and Sheldon stiffens, unsure of what's going on.
Penny takes his face in both hands and regards him with honest affection shining out of her warm green eyes. Then, in a slightly ridiculous approximation of a Texan accent, she drawls, "Shelly, honey, you will always be one'a God's special little angels, and you will always be special to me, forever and ever until the very end'a time."
She leans forward.
His breath stops. His heart stops.
She kisses him on the forehead.
Time stops.
Penny's hair brushes his face. Her palms are on his cheeks, thumbs firmly hooked on his jawline. Her lips are soft and strong. She smells half like soap and half like skin and she kisses him right on the forehead.
"There!" Penny jumps back cheerfully. "Did it work?"
"Oh," Sheldon says softly.
Penny's busying herself with cleaning up the pie dishes. She seems oblivious to what just happened. Her blonde hair swishes forward around her face, and she looks at him with a happy quirk in her lips. "Awww! Your mom said that would shut you right up! Now, I'm going to put this in the fridge for you and Leonard..."
Leonard.
She looks over at him affectionately. "Are you consoled now? Or is that shell-shock?" She reaches with her free hand, pats him on the cheek.
Faster than thought, his hand's around her wrist. He doesn't look at her, just holds on. Her skin is hot and dry, and her wrist is so much smaller than his hand.
The pulse under his fingers skips a beat.
"Uh, Sheldon? You okay?"
Her wrist slides out of his grasp.
"Hey, I didn't mean to upset you. Well, I did a little. But don't freak out." Penny regards him, her freed hand on her hip, the other balancing the pie at head height with the trained skill of a waitress. "Look, sweetie, I'm sorry, I shouldn't just get in your space like that."
"I'm not upset."
"Good." She smiles brilliantly. "So is Leonard around?"
"He's still at work."
"God," Penny says, "How can he go to work and leave you like this? Honestly."
How can you sleep with him? Sheldon thinks, so suddenly and fiercely that he barely stops himself from saying it aloud. And he has no idea why he's thinking that.
Penny shakes her head. "Well, I'm going to go pick up my house a little. I totally trashed the kitchen making this, and he's going to come over..." She rolls her eyes.
She's going to sleep with Leonard again.
He doesn't want her to.
He doesn't know why.
She can't know this.
He's not very good with emotions or secrets.
This doesn't bode well.