Not my average angsty crap.

Reparata

Mr & Mrs Jones

Chapter 1

Penny was drunk but not so drunk that she wasn't aware that she was in deep trouble. Bad deep trouble. Horrible, bad, deep trouble. The worst horrible, bad, deep trouble she could imagine and she could imagine some really crappy things.

She dropped her keys several times but finally managed to get the door to her apartment open but she took one step inside and screamed.

Sheldon had chosen to avoid the 'pathetic post-grad prowl', his term for his three friends' attendance at a student-faculty mixer. Given their past track records, he estimated that they would require 92.7 minutes to irritate, panic or gross out the female graduate students who were naïve or brave enough to brave the crowd in search of an intellectual sugar daddy or the free buffet and open bar.

He was about to begin his weekly video chat with Leonard's mother, Beverly, when he heard Penny scream. Since the robbery, he'd been very cautious about almost everything and that had included allowing Leonard to 'weaponize' a softball bat.

Without thinking, he grabbed the bat, threw open the door and prepared to do battle with whoever or whatever had made his blonde nemesis scream as if her life was in peril.

"I'm coming, Penny!" He dashed across the ill-lit hallway and rushed into her apartment. He tripped over her unconscious form just inside the door and plowed into a large and angry man who had a pistol pointed at her. The softball bat that he carried aloft like a Samurai sword came down on the man's forehead with a sickening 'crunch'. If he thought about it, he could probably have diagramed the assault and computed the exact amount of force levied. But he didn't.

"Oh, dear! Oh, crap! Oh, Shit! I'm going to go to jail. I'm going to be housed with Raoul the Rapist and I'll suffer from piles and…"

"Shel. Sheldon, oh, God, please help me." Penny was coming around but still thought that she was alone with the man sent to silence her. She called for her friend to save her not knowing that he already had.

Sheldon crawled over the puddle of puke he deposited after accidentally putting his hand down into the crater he created out of the thug's forehead. He had to find his hand sanitizer before he caught Mad Cow Disease or worse. Instead, he found Penny.

"Penny, it's Sheldon Lee Cooper and I'm sorry to tell you this but I think I killed the man who was going to shoot you. I'm sorry for the mess on your carpet but if you foam it with Resolve and let it sit for an hour or two and then blot it with a damp towel you should be able to avoid a stain and the subsequent loss of your security deposit."

She got to her knees and threw her arms around Sheldon's kneeling form and then gagged when she tried to kiss him in thanks.

"EWWW, Sheldon! Vomit breath! But thank you anyway for saving me. I have to run away, Sheldon. I saw something in the alley outside the club I was at when I was looking for the little girl's room to pee. I took a wrong turn and I saw this guy shoot some poor schnook in the alley and another guy saw me and came running after me with a really big knife and I just ran out and came home but he must have followed me…"

"Penny, how many times must I tell you that excessive drinking is the road to personal destruction? Consider the relationships you find yourself in. There was Kurt and then there was…" He ticked each name off on a finger and then switched hands to continue with #6, Zak.

"Sheldon, someone's out to kill me, to snuff me out, to silence me because of what I saw and all you can do is lecture me on the evils of alcohol? And I don't need you constantly rubbing my losing record with guys in my face."

"Yes, well, I suppose you're right since, given the large cadaver on your carpet and the fact that you ran from the club but that said large cadaver while still alive was waiting for you, your future does indeed look bleak and offer little opportunity to sleep with many more losers. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to liberally apply hand sanitizer to my hands and arms and then call the police and turn myself in."

The part of his lecture about the guy waiting for her was what stuck. "Oh, Sheldon, sweetie…"

"Now, Penny, I'm a firm believer in owning my errors and even though I should get points for saving you, I still must face blind Lady Justice. Will you come and visit me on alternate Sundays?"

"Sheldon, what are we going to do? I finally got a speaking part in a movie and – and – " She started to cry and Sheldon's panic button was pushed and stuck. He put and arm around her and mumbled 'There, there, Sheldon's here' but she pulled away from him.

"Go brush your teeth and use mouthwash before you attempt to comfort me. Your breath would make a maggot gag!"

"Well! That's the thanks I get for saving you? I could have easily allowed the Latin Chewbaca to shoot you by simply minding my own business, Penny, but instead I answered your shrill cry for help and this is the thanks I get?"

He stood up and wiped his hands on his pants and cringed. He still had Chebaca's frontal lobe all over his hand and he'd just soiled his pants and had almost nothing clean that wouldn't foul up his clothing rotation.

"I am going to go back to my apartment, Penny, wash my hands and change clothes and then call the police. I will not be a fugitive. I saw the movie and it didn't end well for a lot of the characters and I doubt Harrison Ford enjoyed being the prequel to US Marshals anyway."

"I guess you're right. I'll go with you. Maybe the police won't care that you off'ed one of the state's biggest organized crime figures and will just let you go in thanks without a charge or a trial? And the mob will just say, 'Okay, it was an accident, no harm, no foul? No!"

"That does seem rather doubtful but it's my duty to obey the laws and I must do what I must." She hated it when he assumed that high-browed, holier-than-thou attitude and so she popped him hard in the arm to get his attention.

"Listen, if they put you in stir someone on the inside will shank you for a pack of cigarettes, Sheldon. Is that how you want to be remembered? 'Shanked Shelly'?"

"We'll go to the FBI, Penny. We'll seek out the real life counterparts to Mulder and Scully and we'll be fine. Let me clean up and change and we'll go."

Penny took a look around her apartment and paled. "Sheldon, I don't think this guy was going to shoot me. Look!"

A leather case was lying open on the coffee table and there was a cooking spoon, a hypodermic and a plastic package of what they both knew was either heroin or something equally lethal.

"Penny, grab your stuff. I saw a documentary on the Discovery Channel about this kind of thing and he was going to give you a 'hot shot' and we'd have all thought that you'd slipped into hard drugs. Grab your stuff. We need to leave now!"

Sheldon was on the edge, the very finest of edges, of panic and when he panicked he did stupid things like…whack an enforcer for the drug lords with a loaded softball bat. He was about to do something even dumber but Penny saw the panic in his eyes and grabbed his hand and dragged him down to her car.

"Penny! I'm still covered with brain matter. I can't – "

"Shut up, Sheldon. Better his brain matter than mine or yours, right? Now, where the hell is the FBI office, do you know?"

"One would presume that the Federal Bureau of Investigation would be in the Federal Building." He leaned back with a smirk.

"Okay, do you know where the Federal Building is?" She was almost to the point of returning to her apartment and shooting up with that hotshot and ending this torture.

"No." He was staring at the blinking 'Check Engine' light that seemed to mesmerize him in the darkened interior of her crappy car.

"Find me a damned phone booth!"