1Europe is not fun. Especially Behind-Civilization-And-Turn-Left, Germany, where Penny finds herself. The village, that she seriously has not caught the name of, has no gas station, no theatre, no coffee shop or clothes store. It has one grocery store, one liquor store, and three bars. So it is glaringly obvious what the primary form of entertainment is.
And it has cold. Lots of cold.
Penny is used to cold. She is not used to riding a snowmobile to work.
Penny is not supposed to be here. She is supposed to be on the shoot, the one that took her to Europe in the first place. She should have known the movie was doomed to failure when she had to find half of her own airfare. But she had yet to find anything better so she hopped on the opportunity that she could see only to finally reach and hear that they had cut the budget-and her character.
There was no money to take her back home.
So all she could do was take a job in the first place she could find, in a remote town that was as close to Berlin as she could get with one bus ticket.
Serving beer in a bar where all the patrons speak a different language is not easy. She fills pints and takes money without a word. She learns the art of body language (useful, she guesses, for her career) and knows two pints of Heineken different from 2 pints of any of the German beers that she doesn't know. She gets hit on so much she has to Google 'no' in German on the office computer.
She Googles 'yes' too, just in case.
To sum up, Germany is no winter vacation. It is lonely and stressing and cold and boring. She gets overworked and underappreciated (Granted she really cannot tell if her boss is praising her when he talks to her) and she is pretty certain she is the new town freak.
She almost screams in happiness when one patron, with piercing blue eyes and a tall lanky frame, looks up at her from across the bar and says, "Two pints of Heineken, please."
...
Sheldon did not like alcohol.
It was bitter and it sometimes burned on the way down. Also, he had promised his mother. But, seeing as he had abandoned the university and all contact with her after his breakdown, he guessed it was feasible that he could leave her teaching behind too.
The rural research lab in Germany did not pay a lot. He was working with people who were intellectually inferior. It was frustrating and it almost made him miss Holland and the university there.
But all he had to do was remember how they had treated him like a glorified desktop computer and he got over it quick.
It was colder in Germany, and he had to buy a thicker coat and hats, plus add another layer to his usual ensemble. He wondered how his mother would react to seeing him dressed in plaid button down shirts, thick jeans and boots. She would probably put it down to the breakdown's affect on him.
He almost wanted to hear her comments. But he was a disgraced physicist, the runaway. He had to act like it.
So he drank. Not a lot. Just a few sips, enough to feel a buzz that alcohol in the bloodstream promised. He would join in on the drunken songs his fellow researchers would sing once he caught the words, but he never drank enough to act rowdy or do anything as ludicrous as prance naked in the snow. He would be the designated driver, if he could drive or if they needed to drive anywhere in the small town.
The barmaid was staring at him. That usually happened after he said something science related. But all he had done was ask for two beers. Oh. Maybe he had said the request in English, and she, like everyone else in this town, didn't speak a lick of it. He cleared his throat and repeated the sentence in German. She shook her head as if to clear it.
"Um, hi," she said - in English, in an American accent- "I haven't heard anyone around here speak English since I got here."
"Oh," was all he could say. Then again, "I'm quite certain we are the only ones here who speak anything other than German. Popular conception is that most persons in Europe speak at least on second language conversationally, and that English is popular, but that assumption could not be extended to every person in Europe, I presume. I would be willing to bet there are other villages out there where everyone speaks their mother tongue only, which are most likely just as small and rural."
She kept nodding, "I'm Penny. You are?"
"Sheldon."
...
They don't talk much.
It's sad, really. He doesn't even come to her bar often. And he doesn't always order drinks when he does. Penny takes up watching him. He's quiet and quirky and his dress sense is very geeky, but it suits him.
He's seated in a booth that is in a blind spot from where she stood serving beer. But instead of just paying attention to what she's doing, she leans over, hand on the tap for one of the German beers she doesn't know. She jumps back when cold beer gushes over her top. The guys at the bar yell in approval and Penny's cheeks get inflamed.
She realises she is a bit invested in the tall lanky guy, the only one for miles that can understand her, even if it was just because they spoke the same language. She cleans up the mess, ignoring her boss' annoyed looks, and is rewarded when he looks over at the increase in noise at the bar. Their eyes meet and she blushes again.
It is kind of sad that the only person she can talk to doesn't seem to want to talk to her. She sits on her borrowed bed in the boss' spare room, where her map of the area has a bright red line pointing out the bus and train routes, looking through German magazines that his wife lends her, wondering if she was stuck like this, a fish out of water, listening to and reading a language she doesn't understand, never speaking English, or at all, ever again.
She says a few things in English, muttering under her breath, just to make sure she still has it.
She bumps into Sheldon in the little grocery store. He is buying groceries and she is there to buy chocolate and these German-brand chips she discovered the week before. He says hello in German, then corrects himself. Penny finds that she is holding her breath. Butterflies do a dance in her stomach. He asks her if she is on break, tells her the store is useless when it comes to quality brands of tissue. All this while Penny is having a mild heart attack and losing herself in his eyes.
She tries to get a grip, but her crush seems to grow when she doesn't see him for a few days. Every time the door opens, cold wind rushing in and freezing her nipples under her cotton top, she turns to look if it was him walking in.
She sees him walking down the street one day and without knowing what has come over her, she grabs his hand and tugs him into the dark alley between the bar and the grocery store.
"Penny what are you..."
She slams him into the cold wall, kissing him hard.
...
They don't have sex.
For starters, it was too cold to have sex in a dark alley in January. Snow crunched under their feet as they ground into each other, their lips fused together, hands under each other's shirts and down each other's pants.
But their elevated temperature and hot breaths make it as warm as a sauna in that alley. And they kept going back.
Sometimes Sheldon was the one pressed to the brick wall as Penny climbed him like monkey bars. Sometimes Penny's back was to the wall, or even her front, cheeks and boobs scraping on the bricks. Sheldon touched her over her panties, but she stroked him outright, and smiled when he groaned into her ear. When six o'clock and her break comes around, she would head out with a pack of cigarettes so her boss didn't get suspicious as to why she was spending her break in an alley.
Neither Penny nor Sheldon smoked.
They didn't talk much either.
She is not sad to leave. The moment her boss pays her enough money for her ticket, she hugs him and his wife goodbye and goes to pack. She gives them her email and home address for her apartment in Pasadena and takes the first bus out of town.
She guesses if she had anything there to look forward to, if she wasn't alone and stuck in the town, she would feel more remorse. Sheldon can stay here. He could speak the language; he had friends and a good job. He had a chance to get out anytime he wanted. She had to take her chance while she had it. She's the one who came into Europe with no money and trusting in people guaranteed to let her down and who literally abandoned her. She doesn't even feel bad about leaving without saying goodbye. There's no point. Their relationship status is in suspense, tense like taut wire. She's not even sure she can call him a friend.
She gets off the bus in another town, catches a train to Berlin, and buys her ticket for home.
...
He does not like Germany. Not the whole country, just this town, the strange existence.
Funny enough, before Penny left, the town had been quaint. With nice people who didn't care that you were the person that stared at them from magazine covers, the same one who was a genius and had a breakdown and fell off the map and into their lives. But now, beer was even worse than usual, the food was just as awful, the constant German made him long for home, where everyone spoke the same, or almost the same, language as you.
He packed his bag and took a bus then a train to Berlin, buying a ticket to Pasadena, where he was hoping to get his old job back.
He wondered where Penny ended up going.
...
She does not recognise him at first. Seriously, she doesn't know how it's possible. Just because he wasn't in a big windbreaker and jeans and boots, her eyes pass over him as just another person. Then she gets a second look. He still had those striking blue eyes and strange demeanor, plus the t shirts that were the brightest thing about Tiny-Backward-Town, Germany.
But then he opens his mouth and it instantly clicks. Only Sheldon can take a slightly pleasant chore like supermarket shopping and turn it into a lecture. His short friend looks annoyed as heck and Sheldon doesn't seem to notice or care. She would be embarrassed to admit that she fluffs her hair in the security mirror on the end of the aisle and straightens her blue plaid top before rushing to the cereal aisle. She strolls along, looking at brightly coloured boxes, seeming totally distracted. Acting lessons were certainly paying off.
She can feel the instant he sees her, but she is very certain she looks totally engrossed in making a choice between Grape Nuts and Cheerios. He says her name and she looks up like she cannot possibly fathom who may know her in the supermarket. She greets him fondly with a hug and everything, and his friend's glasses almost shatter with how far his eyes bulge out looking at her. She and Sheldon talk easily enough, but she can sense the tension in both of them. It is like Germany was a different dimension or an alternate reality. Now that the world was back to normal, they did not fit into each other's lives. They hardly did in Germany. Penny pushes her cart down the aisle, ignoring the tightening in her chest.
...
He doesn't want to tell anyone about her. Not that she was particularly to blame. Sheldon knew if his friends found out about Penny, they would also want to know about where he was, what he was doing.
He doesn't want to tell them about that either. But then Leonard pestered, and he pouted, and he whined. Til Sheldon blurted the whole thing out, everything except the beer drinking and the heavy petting in the alley and playing Brassiere-ball with the rest of the researchers using borrowed undergarments from some local females. Those were going to his grave with him.
Leonard's mouth was scraping the ground when he heard Sheldon was in Germany with a girl. He clarified that was not with her, they happened to be there at the same time, and they also happened to be the only two who spoke English. She worked in the local bar and he at the research facility.
He chose to ignore the smirk on Leonard's face as he knew that Leonard's imagination was filling in the holes in his story.
He saw the poster on his way to the comic store one Wednesday and immediately recognised Penny under her costume. She should have guessed she was an actress. And without thinking he memorised the number of the ticket office
...
Her career was not taking off. The play was a bit stupid, though it did have its good points. She had the stupidest role, and her costume was- you guessed it- stupid. She was promised a lot of talent scouts and agents would be there though. And the cast were all great people to work with.
She was practicing lines in her apartment when a package was delivered to her door. A bit confused at first as to what it might be, she opened the long, thin box and found a giant bouquet of roses. The card was in German.
How the heck he knew about the stupid play, she had no time to figure out. She inhaled the fresh flowers, sighed happily and headed off to rehearsal.
Her stupid costume itched and the teenager that was playing the little girl whose imaginary friend she was supposed to be kept missing her cue. Other than that, opening night was a success. When she finally took off the blue, purple and yellow headdress for the night and headed to the dressing room, she was tired and self satisfied. The teen came over and apologized a million times and she told her it was okay. The director told her what a great job she was doing and she reminded him she knew how to use a chainsaw as well as a tractor, could tie up a steer and slaughter a chicken so he better get his hand off her thigh. The girl who played the mother borrowed some money to go home. And then Sheldon told her she did very well.
She spun around, took him in. He was wearing a quirky suit, and he had a box that definitely had chocolates in it. She grinned at him, thanked him, then suddenly the box of chocolates was forgotten on the floor when she sprang into his arms. They kissed like their lives depended on it. Penny had only one coherent thought as her ass hit the side of her dressing table and Sheldon slowly ground his hips into hers: did this mean they were dating?
...
Unfortunately not. But it did mean they progressed past third base, right there on the corner of her dressing table in the wings of the obscure theatre. And it also meant she met his friends. And it meant she could look forward to lectures about her sweater ending up over his apartment when she came over to visit.
Leonard kept saying she was good for Sheldon. Whatever that meant. As far as she was concerned, their relationship was toxic. There was no definition for it, yet it prevented her from dating other guys, had her spending time and making an effort to look cute when she saw him. He brought her ice cream when she was having cramps and held her purse while she went to the bathroom. They definitely acted like they were together. And they certainly had sex like they were. However, she would still blanch when anyone suggested he was her boyfriend, and the way he shook his head like someone had wound him up and let him loose meant he wasn't ready for her to call him that.
He only had to say one word, "Stay," when she complained and threatened to leave him. They were basically living together after that, though she still hung onto her old apartment.
...
She is not the easiest person to live with. Adapting had never been Sheldon's forte, but living with his almost exact opposite, he began to realise that short of killing her, he would have to just swallow his pride and adapt. She was not sloppy, just messy, which was very different.
He sometimes comes home to a trail of her clothes leading to the bedroom. He doesn't mind those times as much.
...
Five years don't feel like five years. They go by so quickly and one day you turn around and look to see yourself heading to your sitcom sidekick job at five o'clock in the morning, only to remember you were not doing this five years ago.
Penny is tired of seeing herself in the tabloids by now. They know stuff she doesn't remember telling anyone. They know the coffees she likes and the underwear she maxed out her credit card on. They know about the fender bender in high school. They know about Sheldon.
He was a little hard to hide, since he was there, walking beside her when the paparazzi were riding past. They speculate for weeks about him, til someone does their job and finds out he is a certified genius. Then, suddenly all the late night hosts are asking her about him. So she has to label it, doesn't she?
So he is her boyfriend of five years.
He doesn't protest as much as he used to about it. In her book that is a win.
"The Emmy awards?" Sheldon scrunches up his face when she shows him the invitation, "Why do I have to go?"
"You don't," she tells him, "If you don't want to support me, I'll just find some hunk from the network to escort me."
"Oh. Well, that is better than my suggestion. I was going to tell you to go alone."
Penny sighed with exasperation, pushed him onto the nearest horizontal surface and screwed him senseless.
He went to the Emmy's and gave her a big kiss when she won.
...
They are not the best parents in the world. Alice has her diapers changed regularly and her bottle whenever she wants it. She gets a nap twice a day, and hardly cries.
So what if Penny or Sheldon don't do much to contribute to this. That is what Yelena is for.
She is amazing. Whenever Penny comes home, her little girl is happy and clean and full, and the house is spic and span. What would Penny do without the housekeeper, she would never know.
When Yelena announces that she is leaving for Utah to be with her family, Penny almost cries.
She takes time off to re-learn to be a mom. And she finds she likes it. Alice is a joy. But that does not mean she is excellent at it. To tell the truth, she does some stuff that borders on child abuse. What Sheldon doesn't know won't hurt him, just his daughter, she guesses.
He comes home to her having a complete meltdown one day over a pot of oatmeal. He takes the spoon away, cleans up the oatmeal splatters off the wall and off Alice, calms them both down and deposits them on the couch. She doesn't even realize she is speaking until she sees the look on his face.
"I love you too," he replies, and Alice gets squashed as they kiss each other.
…
They don't live happily eve after. But they come as close as two flawed humans can get.