Wo ho, it's been a long time, but I was recently home and watched some TBBT, and man so much has changed! Did you know that L/P got married?! Damn. Caught the Lenny bug again after watching those episodes and then rewatched some earlier s1/2 stuff, and that spawned this small two part thing based around that time period. They're both OOC pretty heavily, and there's plenty of self loathing and self-angst in this chapter. The inspiration for this was also two songs, one called 'Drown' and one called 'Beneath the Skin.', would recommend giving them a listen, both great tunes. Enjoy and let me know what you think if you like!

'Who will fix me now, dive in when I'm down?

Save me from myself, don't let me drown.

Who will make me fine, drag me out alive?

Save me from myself, don't let me drown.'

Penny sighed as she pulled on the smoke halfway between her lips and shaky fingers. It'd been another long night at the cheesecake factory, filled with crude one-liners, depraved stares, numbers on napkins and blatantly shit tips to prove a point at her declination of their awful advances. Penny hated them, but not purely because of their dehumanizing advances towards her, but because in their glassy eyes she saw a reflection of herself, she was no more than the bottom feeders that disgusted her so. What'd she achieved? In reality, nothing; she clung on to the ropey dream that she was somehow destined to be a famous actress, with a beautiful husband and smiling children, the picture of suburban Hollywood bliss. That dream though, was frayed harshly, and Penny knew it. With every passing day without any response to her desperate attempts to any and all casting roles, it was clear that it was inclining itself towards an inevitably unreachable distance. So, what did that leave her? A dead-end minimum wage job that left her working until well into the early morning multiple times a week, with no hope of even a promotion to a managerial position. Fuck.

She stomped on the butt of her cigarette harshly, a small insignificant, even unnoticeable attempt at defiance towards the hand that life had dealt her; it was pathetic, really, hopeless even. But she could conjure no more anger or passion, she was all but broken. Her eyes wondered up across the street, and the low blue fluorescent hum of the liquor store beckoned her. Penny knew how she'd be spending the night. Like light to flies, the light bathed her in it's gloomy glow as she approached nearer. On autopilot, she entered the store, took a basket and proceeded to tredge through the dank aisles, grasping at bottles of progressively harder alcohol, from beers, to wine, to spirits, slowly making the product of her 12 hour work shift obsolete as the collection in her basket grew and the thoughts of drinking alone clouded her mind. The kid behind the counter didn't even look up at her as he started to ring through the clinky bottles of ruin, let alone ask for her ID as he started placing the bottles of various sizes absentmindedly into an undersized plastic bag; fantastic, anyone that saw her would immediately make the presumption that Penny was indeed a raging alcoholic. But really, how far was that from the bitter reality anyway? She payed and unsteadily grabbed the bag, almost swiping for it as she edged towards running out of the store to save herself from sinking further into darker thoughts.

Her ride home mirrored the events of the day, pointless and without direction, what was she going home to apart from an empty sofa and a cold, and it seemed an ever-increasingly larger bed that she shrank into every night, coating the pillowcase that she rested her head upon in the almost ritualistic series of crying fits that plagued her night in and night out. It was without thought that she collected the routine series of bills from her post hatch, the bills that would be payed late, without doubt. The clinking of the bottles in the bag that swung limply from a hand by her waist created an almost rhythmic pattern that helped her get up the daunting flights of stairs. Routine. Everything was routine. There was no spontaneity in her life, except for the weekly days off of work that rotated, of course. At least those kept her on her toes. Penny pressed her bodyweight into the door as she rotated the key, dropping her work bag, slipping her feet out of the restrictive shoes that held them, and immediately unpacking the contents of her carrier bag out onto the coffee table. She sighed as she dragged herself off to her room to change into a pair of soft shorts and a vest, pulling her big blue duvet with her as she re-entered the small living space of her apartment.

There was no music. She didn't put the TV on. She didn't even fetch a glass for the beers or the wine. Penny simply sat, bundled up underneath her duvet, staring blankly ahead of her as the inebriation slowly started to take hold of her, and dragged her mind down into places she was surely to drown in. Swig on swig, gulp on gulp, the tinge of a strong red permeated with cigarettes filled her mouth, since when was she a smoker, anyway? Jesus christ, how tragic she felt in that moment. Her eyes absentmindedly wandered up to her door as she stared right through it, what was Leonard doing right now? She let herself indulge in the thoughts of him, sitting up worried about her, her wellbeing and her health, the dark rings under her eyes, she wondered whether he ever thought about her, in the way she thought about him; if he too, ever lost sleep, tossing and turning thinking about how much easier it'd be if she was there beside him, resting her head on his chest. There was almost a sense of erotic depravity to her wading mind, of course he didn't think about her like that, why would he? Why would a man with so much, and a wonderful, smart, doctor girlfriend, think about her, a nobody. There'd never be any Cinderella story between the two of them. 'Worthless.' She told herself, over and over again, beating it into herself as tears now started to collect on the corners of her darkened eyes. There was nothing she could do, with a stinging blink, they slid onto her face, slowly making their way down to the bottom of her chin, hanging there in perfect equilibrium before falling down into the light blue of her duvet, creating tiny dark patches, staining another lonely night into the fabric. They started to flow more freely, but she never stopped drinking. Time was lost to the boggy mind that plagued her, the small sniffles became hiccuped sobs, which in turn, inevitably disfigured into hopeless cries that filled her darkened, empty apartment. Penny herself had no idea as to the volume of her cries, no idea of the desperation that crackled through them like harsh lightning, they screamed out for a savior.

It was only due to the fact that Sheldon had spent the evening berating him for an insignificant mistake in the dinner order that Leonard couldn't sleep. Yes, that had to be it. It definitely did not have anything to do with the fact that it was nearly two in the morning and Leonard hadn't heard the characteristic slam of Penny's door signalling she was home from another long shift. He liked to believe that it was because of a signal from Penny that she cared about him, she wanted to let him know that she was home safe, that he could sleep without fear of her being in trouble. What he liked to believe must've been complete bullshit, surely, but that didn't stop his mind from creeping into that realm. What would she ever see in him, though? A beautiful, charismatic, talented and funny woman, she was perfect, and so much smarter than she gave herself credit for, too. But yet even he knew it, she didn't see her own worth in a modicum that he did, the way she would look down when she rarely talked about herself, the way she avoided his eye when they shared a compliment or he made her laugh. Leonard sighed to himself, maybe in another life. Another life in which he was several inches taller, had no glasses, was into sports and not doctoral journals and comic books. It was only after sometime of this line of thought that Leonard was broken from his self-depraving fantasies. He heard the door, but something else too. A clinking sound, barely audible, and a more gentle closing of the door. She was home, he could sleep now, right? Not because she was home and safe of course, but simply because there would be no chance of a slammed door waking him up from a night of dreams about his loving and caring girlfriend, Stephanie.

Stephanie. The inevitable feeling of creeping guilt spread throughout Leonard's gut,here he lay in his bed, almost praying that Penny had some kind of emotional connection to Leonard, a sweet spot he so wanted her to act upon. He was pathetic, how could he not be in love with his real, tangible girlfriend, but be so hopelessly head-over-heels for a woman that had rejected him in the past. He closed his eyes and tried, desperately tried to lull himself into a state of sleep, but it wouldn't come. Something about the way she'd opened the door, it was different, he was sure of it. The rational part of his brain screamed out at him for reading so deeply into the opening of a fucking door, but he couldn't help it, he knew Penny, as much as they both tried to deny or hide it.

After some time had passed in the same restless state, Leonard crawled out of bed, pulling on some knee length shorts and a tee, he needed to get a drink, that was all. He padded out into the hall and kitchen, quietly opening the fridge and absentmindedly looking for some juice or milk. The inner battle within him raged, was he being quiet because he wanted to avoid the wrath of Sheldon, or because he wanted to desperately listen out for any sound from the apartment so close to his? He knew.

It seemed almost out of body, out of control, as he edged towards his door; the quest for a late drink was forgotten, the low glow of the fridge gently permeated the apartment, but he hadn't even noticed. His fingers had reached the doorknob of his apartment before he knew he was even there, he had stepped out into the hall without thought. His ear inevitably edging towards her door, but it didn't need to be close; Leonard could almost feel the sobs before he heard them, they had pierced straight through his body, chilling him to the core before he'd even consciously acknowledged their sound.

It was again, without thought, that he pressed on, bare feet sliding across the small gap to her door. It was without any knocking or any thought or rationale outside of a deep-rooted need to stop her tears that he found himself turning the handle to her apartment.

He cracked open the door a slither, not enough to walk straight in; in fact, not even enough to see the reality of the situation before him.

'Penny?'

And a classic cliché cliffhanger, of course.