Penny knew all about geeky chic, and she wasn't quite the air head she pretended to be. It worked with her cute face and white blond hair. Dumb worked. And when you were cute and dumb people did things for you, people jumped to do things for you. What was smarter than that?
Penny knew the appeal of guys like Leonard and Sheldon, guys who were so smart you seemed to writhe and twist in the convolutions of their conversation. She actually understood a lot more of what they said than she let on, unless they were talking about theoretical or applicable physics, then she really was lost, but so was most of everybody else. She knew that they grew up like the nerds she had seen at her school, lonely smart kids who had their weird little interests and their weird little friends, kids who never dressed cool and never acted cool and couldn't play sports and got beaten up. She knew what that kind of childhood meant for the adult those kids became. She knew how needy they were and how eager to please.
It made her heart ache that first day she met them, the trepid way they said hello and asked her over to lunch. She saw how Leonard hid in those hoodies and baggy jeans, but Sheldon didn't hide the same way. She could tell he wore whatever he wanted to, and that was plaid pants and superhero T-shirts. She noticed how Leonard was immediately trying to reach out to her in his geeky way, using too many words and a funny tone of voice. She saw how Sheldon was merely going along, and probably wouldn't have bothered with her if it wasn't for Leonard. This intrigued her.
She liked both of them, and knew that at least Leonard would bend over backwards to please her, but it was Sheldon that she was watching out of the corner of her eye. He was tall and thin, and she liked tall and thin. His eyes were large and blue, and she could see how she might get lost in them. She liked the way he looked down, the awkward way he stood beside Leonard as he invited her to lunch.
The clincher was when she was looking at Sheldon's white board filled with formulas as foreign to her as hieroglyphics, and she asked if that was Leonard's work, and Sheldon jumped up and claimed it, stood beside the board with that shy look on his face. She knew exactly who both of them were the minute she saw them, and she knew they had the beautiful minds you might see in some movie character or read about in your text books. So she said it, "you're like those beautiful mind guys," and he bit his lip and looked down, but his eyes looked up at her. Pale blue with flecks of gray, beautiful clear eyes with such a sharp intelligence behind them that she felt her breath being taken away. She would have one of them, she was certain of that, but in that moment, Sheldon looking up at her beside the board, she knew which one she wanted it to be.
It was a game, and she knew that. It was an intricate game and she knew that neither of them really understood the rules, although Leonard might have a bit of a better idea than Sheldon. Sheldon might not even be aware that there was a game about to be played, one with many levels and fluctuating scoring systems.
As the afternoon wore on she realized that she had gone to school with plenty of kids like Leonard but that she had never met anyone quite like Sheldon. They were both smart, both geniuses, but Sheldon was smarter. She could see it in his eyes. When she sat in his seat and he told her that he sits there she patted the space next to her and said he could sit next to her. A normal guy would jump at that and sit beside her, his leg against hers, his hand brushing her fingertips. Even Leonard would have taken her up on that offer, sitting a bit stiffly beside her and clearing his throat, glancing over at her nervously. Not Sheldon. He slid his eyes to the side, looked down, and repeated what he had said. He sits there. He explained the reasons why that particular space was his spot, and she was about to slide over to ease his discomfort when Leonard took over.
"Just sit somewhere else," he commanded, and she saw that Leonard did that often, tried to control the OCD quirks that Sheldon had. So she watched him walk around the room, looking lost and uncomfortable, smiling a nervous tic of a smile, until Leonard gave him another command.
"Sheldon, sit!" He did, his knees coming almost all the way up to his chest he was so tall, and she could smell something like soap and light cologne, and she leaned into that smell.
She knew she could take a shower at their place and that she could ask them to go and get her T.V. from her ex-boyfriend because she was dumb and cute. She knew Leonard would bend over backwards for her and drag Sheldon along.
They returned from the T.V. expedition without pants, humiliated. Leonard wore common boxers, just light weight shorts. Sheldon wore white briefs that showed far too much, and he stood with his hands partially covering them, and she saw his slender but muscular legs. She didn't care about the T.V. because this was just a part of the game, her giving them tasks and them trying their hardest to complete them. It was the first roll of the dice in the game that would end with her in bed with one of them. When she hugged Leonard he leaned into her and she could tell he was inhaling the aroma of her hair. When she hugged Sheldon he tensed up and pulled away even as she had her arms around him. She knew at that moment that she wanted it to be Sheldon. She wanted her prize in this game to be Sheldon.