They were complete opposites in every way. She was a supernova in a darkened sky, a violent array of colour against a blank canvas, yet he was a man who was destined to voyage the cosmos alone – to search for answers in an infinite universe. His mind belonged to the stars, but his soul belonged to a girl from a small town in Nebraska, a girl who sought nothing more than happiness in her life.
People were a puzzle he could never solve. For so long he had lived a life of emotional solitude, never letting anyone in – until her. Keeping Penny out was an impossible task; she was an unstoppable force, a blinding light that shattered the darkness. Sheldon was a slave to her wonder. When he was in her presence his heart was open to her, a vast sea of poorly understood emotions that only she could decipher, that only she had the key to.
Love was something that Sheldon was unfamiliar with; the idea of another person being so enamoring that they commanded one's entire thoughts certainly seemed bizarre, yet the majority of humanity viewed it with such importance. He had always thought of himself as above the need for a romantic attachment, and he had never envisioned being in an affair with a waitress who worked at the cheesecake factory – something that his mother would most definitely disapproved of. Penny was an anomaly – she held an allure that he found impossible to resist and a beauty that made the heavens weep. Sheldon's genius did nothing to shield him from her charms.
The rest of the group was completely oblivious to what was going on. To them Sheldon was still the crazy scientist that he had always been and Penny was still their bubbly blonde neighbor.
Night brought with it a welcome relief; night allowed the real world to slip away and forbidden encounters to take its place. In that fantasy world Penny and Sheldon could be together, for however brief a time; they could pretend that that their relationship wasn't going to have to end, they could pretend that they would get their happily ever after. Day always returned and with it returned reality.
One day they would have to face the truth that they would never work. One day they would realize that only in an alternate reality could they be together.