Title: Stuck on You
Author: Talitha Koum
Spoilers: Recent episodes.
Rating: PG-13 for mild language.
Word Count: 4100+
Disclaimer: I do not own The Big Bang Theory. Insert witticism here.

ooo

"Penny, this is unsanitary."

"I can't hold it anymore, Dr. Bladder of Steel." Penny handed Sheldon her cell-phone. "Look. Just scroll through my music and play something loud for yourself. But whatever you do don't turn around. Don't freak out and yank me off the toilet, either."

Sheldon fussed with the impossibly small buttons of Penny's Razzle, his lip curling at the variety of genres. "Hootie and the Blowfish? Green Day? The Phantom of the Opera? Vienna Teng? System of a Down? You are a paradox, Penny."

"Pick something, Sheldon, or I'm goin' to town with or without my earphones in your ears."

Sheldon could almost sense her reaching for her zipper. "Alright! You don't have to be so bossy!" He hesitated. He considered. He opened and closed his mouth more than once. "Have these recently been sanitized--"

Zip.

Sheldon selected a song at random and hurriedly plugged his ears. It was just his luck that he was forced to listen to All Is Love by Karen O & the Kids, which wasn't nearly loud enough at the beginning to drown out Penny relieving herself. When it was loud enough, Sheldon winced at the singing, but then, inexplicably, his foot began to tap and his head began to bob and his hips began to swing.

"My view isn't the best for you to shake it like a Polaroid picture," he heard Penny say over the chorus of children.

Sheldon sulked. The next song played: I'm on a Boat by The Lonely Island.

Oh, good Lord.

Penny tapped him on the shoulder even as he flinched at the language. He walked with Penny to the sink, leaning as far away from her as possible.

"That wasn't so bad," Penny quipped.

"Yes. When I have to urinate, should I let you listen to my music?"

"What kind of music do you listen to?"

"Jazz. I'm a fan of Ben Webster."

"No offense, but I'd rather listen to you pee."

"This coming from a woman who enjoys The Humpty Dance."

ooo

Penny clocked herself out. She and Sheldon stepped outside where gridlock was at a fever pitch. Over half of Pasadena was out of power, just heaping on the reasons why this was the worst day of Penny's life. Her heart squirmed in her chest when she said, "C'mon, Sheldon. I'll take you to buy some new shoes."

"Why?"

Penny was tired. It showed in her face. "If we're stuck like this forever, you're going to have to come back here with me, you know." She unlocked her driver's side door, forgetting she and Sheldon were holding hands. Penny cursed under her breath and stomped around to the passenger's side. "You have to go to work, too, though. I don't know how we're going to do this if--"

"Penny," Sheldon cut her off. He helped her climb through into the driver's seat before he sat down. "I would kick Leonard out and you would come live with me. I would work from home and accompany you to the Cheesecake Factory if I had to."

Penny stared at him, eyes wide. "Really?"

"Of course. It would be impractical for me to live in your apartment."

"Why? We'd be sharing the same bed."

"Yes, but my spot is not in your apartment."

"What about the spot--"

"Doesn't count. That spot is not my point of consistency."

Somehow, Penny felt a hundred times better. Maybe it was because Sheldon didn't hesitate to explain to her his plan in the event of a worse case scenario. Or maybe it was because he looked so calm in the face of crisis for once. Or maybe it was because his hair was still rumpled from when she had dumped water all over his head. (She secretly enjoyed the moments when he loomed and gave her the Moving Finger. Luckily, the power went out mere minutes after she drenched him so he rescinded his desire to change, the heat curbing his anger.) Either way, Penny smiled. "Y'know, Moonpie? I think we're going to be just fine." She hugged his hand against her face.

"Please don't call me that, Penny. I don't know how many times I've told you not to call me that."

Penny jumped when someone rapped their knuckles against her window. She shielded her eyes against the sun to look outside and gasped when she saw Michael, her canceled date.

"What's this?" he asked, pointing at Sheldon. "I thought you said something suddenly came up!"

"Something did," Penny argued. The mental image of the three of them trying to fit on Michael's motorcycle killed her hopes to reschedule. "We're stuck."

"You expect me to believe that?"

Penny turned the tables. "Is that why you showed up? Do you not trust me?"

"For good reason!"

Penny shifted her car into reverse. She peeled out of her parking spot, a hairsbreadth from clipping Michael in his side. She chased him back to his bike, screaming, "I DON'T CHEAT!"

"I think he's got the gist, Penny," Sheldon said after Michael fled the scene.

Penny hit him in the shoulder with his own hand.

The both of them stared at the traffic.

"So…"

"Walking?"

"I suppose."

Penny pulled back into her parking spot and locked her car.

"If you're concerned with your date's opinion of you, don't be. You're clearly too good for him." Sheldon did a double-take at Penny's bemused expression. "Isn't that the saying?"

"Where did you hear that from?"

"From you. You told Leonard you were too good for him the night you terminated your relationship."

"Damn straight."

ooo

Sheldon was nervous. Not just nervous, nervous. Oh, no. His anxiety attacks trumped those of lesser human beings. While some, deluded mortals may suffer bad cases of the sweats and/or hyperventilation, Sheldon considered their plights nothing more than a grain of sand in the shorts of his metaphor. But his nerves? Yeah. Sandcastle worthy.

Death seemed eminent. He felt like he was going to throw up. Two times.

The circumstances what made Sheldon's stomach knot thwarted his insides--here, there, and everywhere--cold first, then hot. Falling like rain, rising like larks.

Dear God, I'm going to hork all over Penny's outfit, he thought. Then she's going to castrate me.

Honestly, though. How many times had he walked with Penny, talked with Penny? How many times had they laundered their clothes together on Saturday night? In a sense, his current predicament--not the stuck-holding-hands but the stuck-with-Penny--wasn't foreign. It wasn't like he failed at idle chitchat as far as Penny was concerned. It wasn't like the bar was set so high he couldn't hope to rally her spirits, her interest, her anything. Penny wasn't a hard woman to please. He knew her very well. Too well, perhaps. Maybe he was over-thinking things.

Sheldon scoffed at himself. He was over-thinking squat. A new element had presented itself to the equation of their friendship paradigm. A tiny, insignificant one lost in a matrix of zeroes. Things were suddenly complicated. Er, more complicated. Sheldon couldn't regard Penny as a less intelligent than he, aesthetically pleasing, brash neighbor. Not anymore. Those were the minority. The majority now poppity-popped like the carbonated bubbles of his Diet Coke during break. (The Diet Coke he couldn't drink for all his crummy in the tummy issues.) No sooner did Sheldon think ambiguous, he thought unorthodox.

The last of which made his face burn.

She had called him her date. She needed him, yet again, and he felt responsible.

Damned Google. Sheldon hated search engines. Whenever he would ask a question in his vernacular, he never found the search results he was looking for. He was forced to dumb himself down in order to read what he needed.

To go on a date.

'We all want to find that special someone we like…'

Sheldon returned to Google's homepage.

How to tell if I genuinely like someone, he typed left-handed, repulsed. He reasoned he must feel pretty strongly for Penny since he had degraded himself by actually typing two sentence fragments. Before he hit the enter key, he made sure Penny was preoccupied with her Facebook on Leonard's computer.

"This is friggin' amazing!" Penny scrolled through her profile pictures. For a moment, Sheldon thought she was browsing porn. "How is it you have the internet?"

"4G wireless routers."

Penny seemed distracted enough.

Click.

1.) Get to know them better.

Three years ought to be sufficient.

2.) Stop and consider why you enjoy the person's company.

Sheldon compiled a list, but he cut himself off after reason ten. This step has no merit.

3.) Consider how many times you think about the person.

Sheldon mentally changed the word consider to contemplate--he loathed repetitious words when reading--and ignored the step entirely.

4.) Think how often you laugh at their jokes etc.

Penny wasn't very funny.

5.) Consider how much you try to be near them.

Pfft. Consider. He lived next door to the woman. He was stuck holding her hand for crying out loud.

6.) Think about how you feel when you touch them, by accident or on purpose.

Sheldon didn't.

7.) If you feel you're ready for a relationship, and are confident enough for a positive response, then go ahead and ask them out.

Sheldon immediately Googled what it meant to take a girl out and came to the conclusion he was ill suited. He had no car. Penny had no car. They couldn't go far.

Then it hit him.

He was a genius. Of course he was a genius.

He knocked on his desk and uttered her name three times to get her attention.

Penny glared. "What?"

"Would you be so kind as to join me for a stroll around the block so I can break in those…" Sheldon gagged on the impending lie. "…lovely shoes you helped me buy?" He had hoped the teenaged employee at the Pay Less would refuse to take his card since the power was out, but--hip-hip-hurray--she had an old-school slide carbon copy machine. Again, Sheldon reasoned he must feel pretty strongly for Penny if he was willing to endure new-shoe blisters. (That and he looked like a clown.)

It was exactly one block from their apartment building when Sheldon realized he liked Penny. She told him, "A Buddhist monk goes to a hotdog stand, right? And he tells the vender, 'Make me one with everything.'"

It was the most ridiculous thing he had ever--

He laughed. Out loud.

Sweet Jesus. He was ruined.

Okay, okay, so he blew the I-like-her thing out of proportion. It wasn't so bad. His mind wasn't numb to traits of Penny's he found less than desirable. He didn't have the urge to fall all over himself and drape his jacket across a puddle in the street so she wouldn't have to get her feet wet. (Doing so? Highly unsanitary. Not only that, Penny enjoyed stepping in puddles so that completely defeated the purpose of his train of thought.) His view of her didn't change. She was still who she was. He was still who he was. They were themselves and nothing was different.

This was about the same as when he finally decided they were friends.

Good. He hated change.

Now for the pièce de résistance.

ooo

After fifteen minutes of walking, Penny had to ask, "Where are we going?"

"It's a surprise."

Sheldon led her to a strange building that looked more like a castle than a house. All tiers and stone walls and wrought iron. When Sheldon knocked on the door, a young man answered. He couldn't have been more than twenty years old. His hair was long and curly and he wore a pin-stripped suit and a matching fedora. His eyes popped when he saw them there. Penny guessed his expression was one of disgust or devotion, the few looks Sheldon ever received.

"Dr. Cooper!" The young man clapped his hands like a child. (Devotion it was.) "What brings you to my humble abode?" He made to grab Penny's hand and kiss it, but she pulled away.

"I need a favor."

"Anything for you." The young man stepped aside and let them in. His house/faux-castle looked like a museum. (It had power.) There were glass cases everywhere. Weapons, art, sculpture, everything. He pried a particular sword off his mantel and held it in his defense, smiling big. "How do you like my latest investment? Couple million."

Penny choked.

"You're not doing yourself any favors handling it like that," Sheldon said, a pained look on his face.

"Oh. You're right. Of course you're right." The young man put the sword away.

What is this? Penny wondered. Some kind of trust fund baby?

"I would like to show my friend Penny your Chihuly."

"Chihuly." The young man bounced off, squawking at them to follow.

Penny whispered out of the side of her mouth, "Who is this guy?"

"Bernard Moceri III. He donated a large sum of money to CalTach last spring. I was forced to attend a dinner in his honor and came to know him a little better against my will. He's eccentric, but a not unpleasant person to be around."

Penny sniggered. Sheldon just called someone eccentric!

Bernard escorted Penny and Sheldon through more of his personal museum where a long hall awaited them. It was dark and although Sheldon was not a fan of darkness, he pulled Penny inside and had her stand in the middle of the corridor.

"You should enjoy this." It wasn't a suggestion.

She sneered. "If this is some kind of--"

The lights flickered on and Penny caught her breath. Large, glass flowers of different shapes and colors were suspended over their heads, casting yellows and blues and pinks on to the floor and across their faces like a milieu of stained-glass windows. All the glitz and glam sparkled in Penny's eyes. She murmured, "Holy smokes."

"They reminded me of you," Sheldon said. "Your Penny Blossoms."

Penny boggled. "Why did you do this for me?"

"Aren't I your date this evening?"

Penny palmed herself in the face. "No…yes…you shouldn't take everything I say so seriously."

"Does this displease you?"

"No." Penny sighed. "That's the problem."

ooo

Sheldon climbed the stairs to the fourth floor. Penny ascended to the top one step in front of him just like she always did. He was forced to follow her to her door.

To quote Raj, he was rightly and truly screwed.

Penny was snide about the whole thing. "Way to see me home, Romeo."

Sheldon didn't know what, exactly, he wanted from her. For Penny to admit she liked him, too? It was the knowing that was getting to him. He had to know. He always had to know.

"Call me old fashioned," Sheldon drawled by accident.

Penny tilted her head to one side. "I had no idea you were so chivalrous. I should have made you carry me home." She bent her knees in turn, rotating her ankles like her feet were sore from their walk. She fooled no one.

"You know I have no measurable upper body strength. That venture would have ended in disaster. At the very least, a trip to the hospital."

"Whatever, Trestle King." Penny fished her set of keys from the waistband of her pants. She jammed her apartment key into the lock of her door, leaving no room for Sheldon to wonder how it was she managed to lose her car key to the likes of 4B. She gave Sheldon a look he couldn't decipher. "I don't get you, Sheldon. Tonight was nice. You can be charming when you want. So why don't you put yourself out there and play the field?"

"The field? Is this a football analogy?"

Penny left her keys to dangle. "Why don't you date?"

"I only just determined I like you as a person, a woman I've known for three years. Dating strangers is beyond me."

"That's why you date them! So you can get to know them!"

"But I don't want to get to know them."

"You got to know me, didn't you? Was that so bad?"

"Incredibly."

Penny gave up. She left the door open so she could see when Leonard, Howard, and Raj got back home from Las Vegas.

"Dating is too much work," Sheldon clucked. He followed Penny into her bedroom where she kicked off her shoes and dug around in her drawers for her pajamas. "Why do men subject themselves to so much trouble when nothing is in it for them? I don't get it."

"There's something in it for them, alright."

"What's that?"

Penny grabbed Sheldon by the collar of his uniform, pulled him to hunch, and kissed the corner of his mouth. "Thank you for taking me to see the Chihuly."

"…oh…"

He got it.

ooo

Sheldon tried contacting Leonard over a dozen times. Leonard would either let his calls go to voicemail or hang up on him. "I have urgent matters to discuss with you concerning Penny," Sheldon spoke in almost-monotone. "Call me when you can." Pause. "Sheldon Coop--"

Penny hit the end button. "Really?"

"It's habit. Meemaw tells me the time when she leaves me voicemails even though it's unnecessary."

Penny licked her spoon clean. At Sheldon's twitching eye, she also licked her mouth clean. "And that means you have to do something unnecessary, too?"

"Nostalgia."

Penny scraped the bottom of the cardboard tub for the last bite of almost-completely-melted, chocolaty goodness. "What do you want to do now?"

"We could play a game."

"I'd rather chew my hand off."

"You'd rather do a lot of things than participate in something I find pleasure in, so I've noticed. Also, I doubt you have room for your wrist. You've consumed more than the recommended serving size of Chunky Monkey."

Penny concentrated on the Chihuly so she wouldn't stab Sheldon between the eyes with her spoon. "Why don't we watch a movie?" Penny smiled and slapped her free hand against the counter, bouncing the spoon into the floor before Sheldon could catch it. "OhmyGod, we should totally watch The Lion King."

"We used up the batteries in both my and Leonard's laptops and you have no power."

"My laptop's fully charged."

"Why?"

"Because I plugged it in?"

"No. I mean why should we totally watch The Lion King?"

Penny knelt while Sheldon plied to retrieve the spoon. "'Cause I mentioned it earlier today. Remember?"

"How could I forget?" Sheldon smiled his killer-Batman smile, nodding his head like, You heard me. "Sarcasm."

Penny AHed. "Check you out!"

"I do believe spending time with you today has done wonders for my comedic timing."

"Is that your way of saying I'm funny?"

"That's my way of saying I'm funny."

They sat on the couch side-by-side, hand-in-hand. Penny wasn't sure at what point she started to feel weird about the whole thing. And not weird. There she was. Holding hands with Sheldon Cooper, curled up in a little ball at his side, watching The Lion King on her laptop. She looked at their hands for the first time in a long time. She had never noticed how large his hands were, how nimble his fingers. They were kind of pretty, all prominent knuckles and profuse veins.

Penny noticed that Sheldon noticed that she was noticing their hands so she said, "Can we switch?"

He held her right hand, which was worse. Now they had to lean in toward one another since Sheldon refused to vacate his spot.

Though, her cheek did fit nicely on his shoulder.

ooo

Sheldon gave up at midnight. "Penny, I need to sleep. You can sit up and wait for Leonard as long as you want."

"You wuss."

"Sleep deprivation is serious business, Penny."

They went across the hall to gather Sheldon's robe, slippers, and pillow. He changed, but only after she helped him tie one of his longer sleeved t-shirts over her eyes. Then he brushed his teeth.

Penny wiped his mouth with a rag as ordered, still blindfolded.

Sheldon reluctantly used the bathroom. Penny listened to Ben Webster. Blindfolded.

Sheldon had never shared a bed with another person in his life so he was hesitant to share a bed with Penny. He considered sleeping in the floor, but dismissed that notion almost immediately. He was tired from being on his feet all day. His legs hurt from wearing improper shoes at the Cheesecake Factory. He smelled terrible. Still, he would not deviate from his routine. Showers were early in the morning. Not late at night. Penny conceded that while she showered twice a day when she worked a shift, she would wait until tomorrow, too.

The mishap from that morning was still fresh in Sheldon's mind.

Sheldon set his cell-phone for 6:00 AM. "Penny. When was the last time you washed your sheets?"

"Think of this like a hotdog. The less you know the ingredients, the better."

Sheldon slept fully robed despite the heat.

They rested beside each other, stiff and staring at the ceiling.

"Penny?"

"Hm?"

"Although I look forward to having my hands to myself--"

Penny snorted.

"--today was not a totally unpleasant experience."

She smiled at him.

ooo

Penny opened her eyes. Oh, shit, she thought. I fell asleep! (She sure as Hell wasn't going to tell Sheldon they slept with the door to her apartment standing wide open.) Penny noticed that the lights were on and she threw her free arm into the air triumphantly. Sheldon was still asleep, which meant it was the crack of dawn. Penny wondered what stirred her awake when she heard a loud BANG coming from the hallway.

"Oh, my God." Leonard's voice. "That layover was terrible."

"Just in time for you to go to work, dude."

"I'm not going to work. I'm calling in si--why is Penny's door open?"

Penny moved to rub the sleepies out of her eyes with her right hand. It smacked her in the face. She hadn't expected lifting Sheldon's dead weight would be so easy…

Penny blinked at her hands. Both of them.

They were unstuck.

"WHOO-HOOOO!" Penny jumped to her feet.

Sheldon jerked awake. "Danger! Danger!"

Penny flapped her arms, planting her feet on either side of his legs. "Look!"

"I'm free?" It didn't take him long to venture, "I think I perspired us apart."

Because, yeah, who wouldn't sweat buckets in ninety degree weather wearing a robe to bed? They had washed their hands so many times while they were waiting tables Penny guessed Sheldon's hypothesis was possible. She went with fate, however, reasoning she needed a day with Sheldon to forget her petty problems.

"What…?" Leonard stood in the doorway of Penny's bedroom.

Howard and Raj pulled up the rear, slack-jawed.

Penny kept dancing. Sheldon grabbed her by her hips to push her back, but she would have none of that. She shook him off, plopped to her knees hugged his face against her breasts, swaying back and forth, EEEing at the top of her lungs.

Howard pulled out his cell-phone to take a video.

"Well," Sheldon said, clearing his throat while Penny gripped handfuls of his hair. "When you were gone, Penny let herself in to our apartment half naked in search for coffee. I had an accident. Penny and I spent the day with one another. I took her on a date. Then we slept together. And here we are."

Leonard blew a gasket.

ooo

Two days later, Penny bumped into Sheldon on her way to collect her mail.

"Raj is taking me to the comic book store because Leonard still isn't talking to me."

They descended the stairs. Somewhere between the fourth floor and the ground floor, they started holding hands. The weird part was neither of them noticed until Penny made for the mailboxes and Sheldon made for the curb.

Penny stumbled. She turned around and followed the line of their outstretched arms until she looked Sheldon in his face.

"Fascinating." He missed a beat. "Would you like to go to the comic book store with me?"

"Why not?"

They walked hand-in-hand into the Pasadena sunshine.

Raj wet his pants.

The End