It was in the car going back home, Sheldon driving so slowly and carefully, that it occurred to her. Her arm in its sling rested in her lap, and she could barely keep her eyes open, the drugs they had given her making her feel sleepy and like she was floating, somehow. She could see Sheldon beside her, both hands gripping the steering wheel tight enough to turn his knuckles white. She licked her lips. He was afraid to drive. That was why he didn't do it, he was afraid. But because she needed him to drive her to the ER he had, despite the fear. In her drugged out, loopy state it almost made her cry. He had done that for her, was doing this, driving basically in his lane but weaving a little. His stops and starts were jerky. He was leaning over the steering wheel, trying to peer through the windshield, looking everywhere. Penny knew that experienced drivers didn't do that, they looked in specific areas that impacted safety. In his eyes she saw this intense concentration, different from when he was working on some equations trying to figure out God knew what regarding quantum mechanics and sub atomic particles. She didn't know what he did, couldn't even pretend to understand it, but when he was doing that he didn't have this desperate uncertainty. How could he so easily do those weird physics things and barely be able to drive? She had been driving since she was 14, driving cars on her family's property and driving down deserted back roads with boys years before she got her license.
He came to a jerky stop beside the curb, their building looming in the distance. Penny felt too tired to open her eyes, never mind opening the door and walking up all those flights of stairs. Her bed seemed an eternity away, an ocean and a continent away. She was content to just stay here in the passenger seat of her breaking down little car.
"Penny?" Sheldon had opened her door and was leaning over her, peering anxiously at her when she opened her eyes.
"No, Sheldon, let me stay here..."
"An impossibility. You would be sleeping in an uncomfortable position, not conducive to your injured shoulder healing, and you would be placing yourself in harm's way,"
"Harm's way?" she said, shifting her weight, attempting to overcome the pain and the drugs to gain enough momentum to get out of her car.
"Yes. You could get mugged,"
He was right, of course. He usually was. So she allowed him to help her out of the car, and he tugged her gently to her feet. He was so gentle. He touched her like she was breakable, some sort of glass trinket. He stood on the side of her that was uninjured, and he let her lean on him while he lightly held her good arm. She leaned into him, and even through the drug soaked haze and the pain that kept spiking through the wrapped gauze high of the pain killers, through all of that she still felt him tense up against her. She thought of the previous Christmas when she got him the napkin signed by Leonard Nimoy. His reaction to that far exceeded her expectations, but she did have expectations. And she had lied. Leonard Nimoy hadn't just wandered into her section of The Cheesecake Factory. She had sought him out at one of those Star Trek nerd functions they were always having. She had asked Stewart months before Christmas to tell her if Leonard Nimoy was set to appear anywhere within driving distance. She knew Spock was Sheldon's favorite Star Trek character, and she knew that the character was more than his favorite. She knew that he identified with the character. She knew he prized the logical side of his mind far over the annoying human emotions side, and she knew that Sheldon had trouble understanding and dealing with emotions.
Now, leaning against him and smelling that talcum powder scent, and the scent of his shampoo and soap, and the fresh laundered scent of his clothes, she asked herself what she had really been up to. For Leonard she had gone down to the local motorcycle shop and got him those lessons, and that gift was kind of funny but kind of cruel. She was making fun of him and the things he couldn't do, couldn't excel at, and those things always tended to be the more overtly masculine and the things that required physical skills. Her gift to Leonard had reinforced his shortcomings, his uncool and nerdy nature, his pale, uncoordinated way of being. But her gift to Sheldon, which took months of planning and an entire day stuck in a two door car with Stewart, and hours in line with more Star Trek fans than she thought could possibly exist, that gift was an acknowledgement of how he saw himself.
It was a lot of stairs, and she had to lean heavily on Sheldon to make it up all of them. She could feel his lean muscles under his layers of clothes. He wrapped his arm around her and she felt protected, comforted, and surprised that he was so strong. She viewed them, all of them, Leonard, Raj, Howard, and Sheldon, as weak nerds. She always forgot that they were men, and strong because of that.
Her legs felt weak by the time they made it up all the stairs, and Sheldon glanced at her before fumbling for the apartment key that was on her keyring. He looked at her with concern, but it was educated concern. She felt that he was measuring her rate of respirations, that he was assessing her coloring and her tolerance to the trek up the stairs and the combination of the torn rotator cuff and the pain killers and the muscle relaxers. With that glance she felt safe again, she felt that if she was in any sort of danger he could help her. Did she feel this way with Leonard?
Inside the apartment, and he made the crack about her not driving heavy machinery and not choking on her own drool, and she made the crack about him helping her into bed, but was it just a crack? Was it just a joke, or was it a wish and a desire disguised in humor?
It occurred to her that she liked Sheldon, not just as a friend and a neighbor and someone slightly to extremely annoying. She liked Sheldon, she liked the way he spoke, the strange rhythm of the things he said, she liked the light blue hue of his eyes, she liked how tall he was and how slender and how pale. She liked that he would go so far out of his comfort zone for her, driving her to and from the ER. As the last of the lyrics of "Soft Kitty" were wrapping up she felt herself drifting off into a drug induced sleep, but if she wasn't so out of it she wondered if she would have the courage to seduce him. She wondered if she was willing to give up Leonard to pursue Sheldon.