The Seven Vices Series: Vanity

Blemish

Darkness for a moment, as it had been for many hours, even before the wintry sunlight diminished from behind her drawn curtains.

Smooth enveloping darkness, anonymous. Tucked into a corner of the couch she disguised herself amid the rest of the shadows. Grown tired of the rom-com movie marathon she had engaged herself with most of the day the woman had flicked off the TV a while ago and was now sitting quietly in the anonymous dark, until…

Light.

Sudden and bright clinical light piercing her rigidly preserved darkness.

Penny turned quickly but was immediately dazzled by the near-blinding light, and when her sight finally recovered enough all she could make out was a lengthy dark form almost the height of the doorframe from which the disturbance came; a charcoal blotch between her artificial night and the harsh white hallway light issuing from round the silhouette's edges.

Penny squinted but the power of the light made her eyes water and close tight several times. She held her hand out to protect her eyesight and already the shape became a little clearer, but not enough to distinguish any details from the shadow.

"My, it's dark in here," the shape said in Sheldon's voice. Penny could not make out the shapes of his face or the detail of his clothes, but she did see a dark form in the figure of an arm reaching for the light switch.

At once Penny bolted from the sofa to the door in one lightening speed motion and caught his arm before he reached the switch.

"Don't!" she hissed. "No lights!"

She was close enough to see his face now, sharp and quizzical. Realising this, she released his arm and held her hand between them both to shield her own face, knowing he could see her better than she could see him.

"No lights? The fuse blown has again? I've told you time after time not to have so many appliances running simultaneously, you don't need to use the hairdryer and watch TV at the same time," he lectured.

Penny thought about all the gadgets and computers and other crap running in his apartment all hours of the day, but arguing with him would delay him leaving. "Sheldon just go, ok?"

But go he did not. He simply looked back at her as if he didn't understand her command.

She growled angrily, balled her fists and pushed against his shoulders. "Go! You understand go, don't you?"

"To leave, depart, to move from one location to another, into, towards or away from," Sheldon recited in a level tone, as though Penny wasn't pounding against his chest. "I'm familiar with the term, yes. I just don't see why you are instructing me to do so."

"Because want you to go! I don't want to be in the light and you're… you're letting all the dark out!"

Penny struggled against him but Sheldon was surprisingly sturdy.

"Perhaps you are having money trouble again?" he continued in the same almost blissfully ignorant manner. Was he ignoring her on purpose, or was he really that bad at understanding social principles? "You certainly seem to be finding new ways to reduce you outgoing payments. No lights, no candles this time either." He cast a critical gaze around the shadowy room. "Looking at the levels of dust on your shelving units I see you have even saved on polish for the last week. Thrifty."

Penny hit against his shoulders on every other word, "This has … nothing to do with … me being …. poor!"

In a last effort Penny threw all her weight against him to no effect, and when he didn't yield she snarled again, then she flew across the room and landed in a heated flurry back on her couch.

She swung her legs underneath her and folded her arms. "What d'you want?" she said sulkily, not daring to look up at him. "And shut the door!"

Sheldon delicately stepped into her dust drenched air and did as he was asked, keeping one hand wrapped around the handle.

"You are aware that tonight is Halo night?" said Sheldon wheeling back round.

"Yeah."

"Then clearly you are the only one who is," he sighed with disdain. "Raj seems to have confused Halo Night with 'Anything Goes Friday' and has brought with him, for their delectation and my disgust, 'Ghostbusters', insisting we play immediately as it is on loan."

"Can't you just play Halo on Anything Goes Friday?"

Sheldon gave her a piteous look. "Please, as if there's an 'Anything Goes Friday'. The only thing close to that is the Breakfast Bonanza morning every third week of the month when Howard makes us all breakfast, because Lord knows what he makes French toast with. At his hands any meal becomes 'anything goes'."

Penny overcame her irritation with a deep replenishing breath, like Leonard says he does when Sheldon's behaviour gets the better of him. "And what does that have to do with me?"

"Well, your French toast leaves something to be desired, too…"

"No, I meant why are you here bugging me and not over there playing Ghostbusters and leaving me alone!"

"Ah," he said with a wagging finger in the air, pleased they were coming to the reason behind his visit. "I am here because when Raj went beyond all sound reason and produced this low-quality game on this Halo night, I was the one who complained the most, so they made me come over here to fetch you."

Although the light was gone Penny kept her face turned away from her unwelcome guest in the hope he wouldn't notice. "Well I don't want to be fetched. I just would like to stay at mine tonight and … and read a good book."

Sheldon, still hovering by the door, lifted onto his toes to see onto the darkened coffee table. "But you don't have a book there," he observed innocently.

"Alright, enough with the third degree!" Penny barked, needlessly defensive, so aggressive that Sheldon took a step back in surprise. "So you can just leave now, bye-bye then."

Predictably though, Sheldon didn't leave. In fact he barely moved at all, but remained lingering strangely close to the door with a hand around the handle. She hadn't expected him to leave; as soon as Sheldon said he'd been sent to get her Penny knew immediately that to him it seemed he had been set a task – and Sheldon never gave up a challenge.

"I'm not sure Leonard will accept failure in retrieving you. Penny, I insist you come with me back to my apartment."

A smile tugged the corners of her mouth at the absurdity of Sheldon asking her back to his apartment, until she remembered why wasn't going. "Seriously, Sheldon, no; no one can see me like this."

"Like what?" Sheldon took half a pace closer. She could sense him peering enquiringly at her as she continued to hide her face. "As unnecessarily dark as this room is, I don't see any abnormalities in your appearance. Granted your hair is in a particularly more dishevelled pony-tail than usual today, and while there is some sort of liquid matter on the lower abdomen of your top, you don't appear any less shambolic than usual."

Wondering how Sheldon could possibly have seen the stain in this gloom, Penny licked her thumb and rubbed vigorously at where she supposed the stain to be. "Thanks for the physical assessment," she said trying to keep the tremor of annoyance at bay, "but my hair isn't the reason I'm not leaving this apartment or turning on the lights, and neither is it me being poor."

Sheldon shifted his weight from one impatient foot onto the other and looked down at her across the dark space between them. "As a gamer I'm usually not averse to sitting in a darkened room all evening, but I have a delicious Thai dinner waiting for me in the other room which I would like to eat before it cools enough to reach the dangerous temperature between piping hot and warm that hazardous bacteria thrive in, so would you please either follow me, or tell me what your problem is."

She didn't like the attitude of his voice, the snappy and irate tone he usually reserved for patronising her with facts she didn't need or want to know, and she bristled with a hundred insults poised on her tongue to spit at him. However, Sheldon was highly unlikely to leave her in peace until she gave in.

Penny pulled a lengthy part of her hair that had long since outgrown its original purpose as a fringe from her scruffy ponytail and twirled it around her fingers, contemplating her decision. She had half hoped her dawdling answer would exasperate Sheldon and he would leave, but he remained as still as his patient expression, so finally Penny arranged that lock of hair to hang deliberately over her face and agreed to the lesser of two evils.

"Fine," she conceded sulkily, "I'll tell you. But only on the condition that you leave me alone afterwards."

Sheldon agreed and was about to join her on the couch but Penny stopped him.

"You promise you're going to leave after, right?"

"Penny I would like nothing but to leave right now and eat my red Thai prawns, but we both know that that is an improbability," Sheldon replied, widening his eyes to show his sincerity.

He was resigned to his duty. So Penny lowered her eyes, and nodded for him to come closer.

Like a bullet Sheldon unclamped his hand from the door and shot across to the space on the couch beside her, sitting in his rigid fashion. His speediness was the most activity the apartment had seen all day, and then the most amount of light as Sheldon quickly (and disappointingly) found the box of matches on her coffee table, and in one deft sweep, stuck a match and touched it to a candle. As the match head sparked and sizzled on the wick everything within a five-yard radius suddenly burst into a palette of honey light and blue shadow that danced and jerked with every wavering flicker of the tiny flame.

Penny drew a lengthy breath but as she started to speak, Sheldon interrupted with a single upright finger. Very deliberately Sheldon tucked his hands under his thighs and lifted himself barely two inches from the couch seat. Then, with all the seriousness he would employ to calculate a significant equation, he proceeded to bounce up and down on the cushion few times with a quizzical but determined look to test his comfort.

So busy was he springing up and down like a coil he didn't see the woman beside him hide something deliberately from him by arranging a section of her purposely over her face.

After a final bounce Sheldon fidgeted from side to side, adjusting his positioning, until he looked satisfied.

Finally he threw her a nod. "Proceed."

"Before I explain, let me start by saying you also have to promise not to overreact," she warned him. "I'm really upset about this and if you make some big thing over it, I'll never talk to you again."

A hint of a smirk dusted his otherwise impassive face. "While the forfeit of this arrangement is tempting," he said, his contemplation provoking the intended scowl from Penny, "I then must point out that I am an experienced scientist who has seen, heard and contemplated far more thrilling and terrible things than whatever hideous secret you are about to impart."

He had a point. Of all the people she knew – from her girlfriends back home to her work friends, and of the boys duelling pixelated ghouls on the XBox next door – surely Sheldon Cooper would be the least… well, the most sympathetic?

Not that he looked very sympathetic right now. In the flourishing bluey-darkness Sheldon looked sterner and more alien than ever. But she had no one else to tell, and she had to tell someone.

"Alright then," she agreed, making sure Sheldon understood the conditions of their agreement, which the look he returned her seemed to confirm.

With nervous trepidation and butterflies spiralling in her stomach, Penny closed her eyes with a heavy sigh, pivoted ninety-degrees in her seat, and with the lightning speed of someone ripping away a Band-Aid, Penny whipped back the protective curl of her hair to reveal to Sheldon her big secret.

***