This "story" is going to be a collection of short stories based on prompts I've collected. All of these shorts will feature Penny and Sheldon in different stages of their relationship.

Prompt one: The Way You Walk

Sheldon was quite disgusted with himself when he finally realized just why he, and everyone else in the apartment, was so fascinated with Penny in her ridiculously high heels as she walked down the stairs. The height of the heels altered her typical stance, forcing her breasts and buttocks to thrust outward. It was a disgusting display, really, and he hadn't the slightest idea why he was watching her disappear down the stairs aside from the fact that everyone else was watching her, too.

For some reason, that bothered him.

The fact that everyone else was watching.

Oh, and him, too.

"I think someone needs to institute a new rule," Howard said, his voice breathy. Clearly, he was aroused. Sheldon glanced toward him, quickly taking stock of all physiological indicators of arousal. Dilated pupils? Check. Increased respiration? Check. Unclassifiable yet always recognizable vaguely-dreamy, slightly sleepy look? Check. The human need to mate was simply beyond him.

"What rule would that be?" Sheldon inquired even though with his superior intellect, he had already worked out what Howard was about to say.

"Every day should be stripper-shoe day," Howard replied.

Sheldon rolled his eyes, about to launch into an explanation of how Penny's stilettos could hardly be called stripper shoes. Then he stopped and truly considered the fact that he was about to defend Penny. She could fight her own battles.

"I agree," Raj said.

"I don't understand why you're all obsessed with Penny's posterior," Sheldon finally said, doing a very good job of convincing himself that he wasn't actually defending Penny by speaking up. "It is hardly the most attractive any of you have ever…" He searched for the right word. The only one he came up with was hardly scientific or exacting, but it would have to do. "…ogled." He made a quick mental note to himself to come up with a new word that sounded much more upright to replace "ogled" in the English language. Something that preferably had Latin or Greek roots and didn't sound like asinine baby talk.

Leonard quirked one brow, craning his neck to look Sheldon in the eye. Sheldon looked impassively back, ignoring the incredulous (and slightly amusing) looks of perturbed disbelief on Raj and Howard's faces. "It's not our fault you're entirely asexual, Sheldon," Leonard said.

Nodding emphatically, Howard added, "It's impossible to explain to someone who doesn't have a libido."

If only they knew.

"Very well. As you are incapable of explaining, I take my leave of you. Gentlemen, adieu." Sheldon strode by them and into the apartment, heading along the most direct route possible to his room. He had thinking he needed to do.

At exactly 8:35 the following morning, when Sheldon was in his spot on the couch, laptop on his lap, correcting the idiocy someone had posted on Wikipedia, Penny poked her head around the door and into the apartment.

"Sheldon?"

Sheldon turned his head toward her even though his gaze remained on his laptop screen for a few additional seconds. Both brows rose as he took in her disheveled appearance. A quick glance at the clock on his laptop screen confirmed that it was, in fact, 8:36 and he wasn't hallucinating Penny's presence. Returning his gaze to her, Sheldon took in her uncharacteristically disturbed appearance.

"You have been crying," he observed, noting the streaks of black mascara running faintly down her cheeks. Her eyes were puffy and red. She looked terrible. He had the wherewithal not to make a comment on that fact, however accurate it was. "And you are not usually up this early."

Penny shot him a vicious look. "Thanks, Captain Obvious," she muttered, sliding into the apartment and shutting the door behind her. "Is Leonard here?"

"No. Leonard went out with Howard and Raj approximately forty minutes ago." Sheldon considered her question. "Did you wish to speak with him?"

Shaking her head, Penny came further into the apartment. If Sheldon wasn't mistaken, and he rarely was, she was still wearing the halter she had left in the previous night. At least she had traded the skirt for a pair of ill-fitting pajama bottoms. In her hands was a pair of shoes.

"Sheldon, can I ask you something?"

"As long as you don't mind receiving an honest and unbiased answer." Sometimes Penny required answers that were neither of those two things. Sheldon had come to the conclusion that it was only fair to warn her that she would receive neither deception nor bias from him.

A faint smile appeared on her face as she slipped the shoes on and rolled her pajama pants up to her knees. The left side, to Sheldon's immense irritation, ended up hanging slightly lower than the right. He was quite proud, though, that he was able to keep his own silence and imagined himself to be quite the martyr. If only Penny knew.

She straightened and shuffled to the left to offer him a better view of her feet. "Do I look like a cheap hooker in these shoes?" she asked.

Immediately, Sheldon's mind went to a place that it ought never to have gone. The thought of killing a man became suddenly and painfully appealing. "I assume your date from last night thought you were?" The way Sheldon enunciated the word date was full of derision and condescension.

Laughing faintly, Penny shook her head. "No, just about every other guy at the club did, though. I had one guy try to shove a twenty in my skirt in an effort to get a lap dance." Walking over to him, Penny flopped on the couch beside him, staring at her feet and the shoes she wore on them. "Course, he didn't have to say anything," she continued. "I didn't want to have sex with him, and don't you dare make some snide comment. I didn't. I wanted to go out to a club, have a fun time, and call him in the morning. Afternoon. Whenever I got up." Wrinkling her nose in distaste, Penny stood again.

Sheldon watched as she walked away from him. The poorly fitted pants did nothing to disguise the way the stilettos enhanced her backside. When she stopped and turned, Sheldon met her eyes, refusing to look lower than her neck. "So what do you think? Do I look like a stripper?"

Supposing strippers wear halter tops and pajama pants that are two sizes too big, then yes, you do. Except that strippers didn't have the type of face that Penny had. They also didn't have large eyes filled with the reticent hope that suffused Penny's. And he was romanticizing her. That was abnormal and unfortunate. It also merited further investigation and further investigation necessitated removing her from the premises.

"Do I?" she persisted, taking a step closer.

Sheldon set his laptop aside, canting his head to the left and peering up at her. "Penny, I fail to understand why you persist in this notion that you must be judged simply by what you look like," he said.

"Yeah, that whole spiel about the inside being what matters is a load of bologna and we both know it," she snapped back. "So just answer the damn question."

She was reacting with anger, which meant she wasn't very angry at all. Sheldon knew he didn't have social skills, and he didn't particularly care about that, but he did have a vast knowledge of the psychological sciences, even if they were largely hokum. Statistics said that people reacted with anger in order to cover up another emotion that they perceived would hurt their social standing in the eyes of another, usually a peer or someone of higher rank. Sheldon allowed himself a moment of pleasure at the idea that Penny might think he outranked her socially.

"Sheldon."

Rolling his eyes with a sigh of disgust, Sheldon shook his head. "No, Penny, you don't look like a stripper." Because she didn't. In all truth she looked like a five year old playing dress up in her mother's formal wear. With the exception of the pants.

"You're just saying that."

In that singular moment, Sheldon realized there was more to the situation than Penny was actually telling him. While it wasn't unusual for her to fish for compliments in such a manner, her current behavior was uncharacteristic. "Penny, have you ever known me to give you anything but an honest opinion?"

"No, but—"

He cut her off. He was good at that. "Then why do you assume that, now, I would follow an optional social convention like lying to you in order to make you feel better?"

She was silent. Sheldon allowed himself a moment to bask in the sweet victory. "You wouldn't," she muttered. The victory felt even sweeter.

With a self-satisfied noise of agreement, Sheldon lifted his laptop and placed it back on his lap. He settled his fingers on the keyboard, prepared to return to fixing all the mistakes on Wikipedia's page on string theory when there was a sudden weight beside him. Sheldon jerked away from Penny's presence as he turned to her, wide-eyed, wondering why she insisted on invading his personal space so often.

"Thanks, moon pie," Penny said quietly. She leaned further into his space. Sheldon's back hit the armrest of the couch and he realized he could go no further. Penny's lips brushed fleetingly over his cheek, and then she was gone from his personal space. A moment later, the door to the apartment was closed, and Sheldon was left with the tingling sensation left by her lips on his cheek and the image of her walking out the door.

Maybe Howard was on to something. There was just something about how she walked in those heels.

Stiffening, Sheldon jerked his head back and forth. "I need new companions." His attention turned back to the laptop screen. Three hours later, having removed all idiocy from the string theory page and having made the posters thoroughly aware of their mediocrity, Sheldon had almost entirely forgotten about Penny's earlier appearance in his apartment.

He was closing his laptop when Penny suddenly burst in, mumbled something about a kitchen mishap, and absconded with a stick of butter from the refrigerator.

No, Sheldon decided as, flabbergasted, he watched her leave, it had nothing to do with the way she walked in those heels and everything to do with the way she simply walked.