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Chapter Two
First updated 1/18/2015
-=o=-
A/N: Some reviewers for Chapter 1 asked if this story was going to be continued. At first I thought not much would change after Leonard and Penny's initial meeting, but I decided that there might be subtle differences as Penny met first Sheldon, then Howard and Raj. So here goes:
-=o=-
Leonard slowly opened the door of apartment 4A, the apartment he shared with Sheldon Cooper. He stepped inside, followed closely by their new neighbor, Penny, who looked around the apartment in wonderment. There wasn't a lot in the way of furniture—a leather couch in the middle of the room, with a small table at one end and a plush chair next to it, forming an L-shaped seating arrangement. Opposite the couch on the other side of the coffee table was a smaller armchair that resembled a director's chair. There were a couple of whiteboards filled with strange-looking equations and numbers; Penny had no idea what any of it meant. At the far end of the apartment was the kitchen, looking much as hers did, including the tacky orange-colored barstools. There were also two desks, both loaded with computer-type equipment, bracketing a television set on a stand with a DVD player sitting on one of the shelves beneath it.
But along the walls—! There were shelves along almost every wall, and almost every shelf was jam-packed with books! More books than Penny had ever seen in her life, it seemed. One bookcase had something other than books in it, though what those things were, Penny had no clue. There was some kind of statue, too, that looked like it had been made of bubble-gum balls and a Tinker-Toy set.
In front of the television set was the mystery man himself, Leonard's roommate, Sheldon. "I hope you haven't let the chicken vindaloo get too cold," Sheldon said without turning around. "It doesn't heat up very well."
"Don't worry," Leonard said. "I have a feeling things are about to heat up on their own in a minute."
"What does that mean—?" Sheldon turned, saw Penny standing next to Leonard, and flinched.
"Hi!" Penny said cheerfully, giving Sheldon a little wave.
Sheldon regarded her as if a Cylon from Battlestar Galactica had just jumped out of the television screen at him. "Leonard, who is this?" he asked warily, looking as if he might turn and run from the room, as Leonard predicted.
"I'm your new neighbor, Penny," Penny said, stepping forward and holding out her hand to shake. Sheldon clasped his hands together and took a step back. "What's wrong?" Penny asked, looking confused. Most guys jumped at the chance to shake her hand! Then she remembered what Leonard had said. "Oh, are you shy?" she asked, teasingly.
"Sheldon doesn't like to shake hands," Leonard explained. At the same moment he was thinking, why didn't she shake my hand earlier? What's wrong with my hands? "He has sort of a phobia about germs."
"It's not a phobia," Sheldon insisted. "It is a well-founded health risk, based on extensive research into germ transmission caused by casual physical contact. If you realized all of the germs that are present on your hands alone, you would spend most of the day washing yourself."
"Oh, I know about all that," Penny said. "I work at the Cheesecake Factory as a waitress, so I have to keep my hands super clean."
Leonard, who was putting out the containers of food on the coffee table, looked up at that. "That's interesting," he said. "I love cheesecake!"
Sheldon looked over at him, frowning. "You're lactose intolerant."
"I don't eat it," Leonard snapped. "I just think it's a good idea!" He set the empty bag out of the way. "Lunch is ready," he announced.
Penny walked over to the couch, regarding it carefully. "Let's see," she said, looking at both ends. "Which spot on the couch is yours, Sheldon?" When Sheldon looked at her in surprise, she smiled and added. "No, don't tell me! Let me guess…" She pointed at the right side. "Is this your spot?"
Sheldon stared at her. "How did you know that was my spot?" He spun toward Leonard. "Why did you tell her about my spot?!"
"He didn't tell me where it was," Penny said, a bit wide-eyed at Sheldon's reaction. "I could tell—there was a small indentation where you sit."
"How do you know that was from my sitting there?" Sheldon asked, archly. "It could have been Leonard's butt that made that indentation."
"Doesn't Leonard sit there?" Penny pointed at the plush chair beside the couch.
That surprised Leonard. He hadn't told her where he normally sat. "How do you know I sit in that chair?" he asked.
Penny looked at him, smiling. "Well, because neither of the other cushions on the couch have an indentation in them, so nobody sits on them regularly. And when you were setting the food out, you stood in front of that chair."
Sheldon and Leonard looked at each other. Sheldon mouthed, Who is this person? Leonard made a be quiet! gesture. Penny studying the food containers, missed this exchange. "Are we ready to eat?" Penny asked.
"Yes, let's eat," Leonard said, relieved she wasn't running screaming from the room after Sheldon's antics. Penny sat down in the middle of the couch, while Leonard sat in the plush chair. Sheldon sat down in his spot, watching Penny carefully from the corner of his eye.
Penny reached for her container of chicken vindaloo, and Leonard picked up his at the same moment. Sheldon, watching both of them, waited until their hands were clear of the coffee table then carefully picked his up and began slowly peeling back the aluminum cover. Penny, meanwhile, had pulled hers off and tossed it casually into the empty bag on the floor next to Leonard's chair. Leonard followed suit, smiling to himself happily now that she was eating with them.
"Well, this is nice," Leonard said happily, watching Penny dig into her chicken. "We don't have a lot of company over," he told Penny.
"That's not true," Sheldon disagreed, straightening the aluminum cover he'd just removed. "Koothrappali and Wolowitz come over all the time."
"Yes, I know," Leonard muttered, wishing Sheldon wouldn't contradict him in front of Penny.
"Tuesday night we played Klingon Boggle until one in the morning," Sheldon continued.
"Yeah, I remember," Leonard told him. Please shut up now, he added silently.
"I resent you saying we don't have company," Sheldon complained.
"I'm sorry," Leonard said automatically, it being his go-to phrase when dealing with Sheldon's idiosyncrasies.
"It has negative social implications," Sheldon went on. He glanced at Penny. "We have company right now, though I wish I'd had a little more advance warning."
"I said I'm sorry!" Leonard nearly shouted. Penny had been looking back and forth at the two of them at this exchange. If Sheldon's made her afraid of us I'm going to— Leonard left the rest of that threat unspoken in his head. He really didn't know what he'd do, and he really didn't want to think about Penny being afraid of them. Or him.
Penny was looking at him curiously. "So—Klingon Boggle?" she asked.
"Yeah," Leonard said slowly, wishing she hadn't asked. "It's like regular Boggle, but in Klingon."
She smiled at him, which somehow made Leonard both happy and more uncomfortable. "That's probably enough about us," he said. "So tell us about you."
Penny set her chicken on the coffee table, looking thoughtful. "Well, let's see… I work at the Cheesecake Factory as a waitress."
"You already told us that," Sheldon muttered.
She gave him an even look, still smiling. "So I did. Hm, so what else? Well, I'm a Sagittarius." She looked at Leonard. "I suppose that tells you way too much about me already," she teased.
"Well, it tells us that you participate in the mass cultural delusion that the sun's apparent position relative to arbitrarily-defined constellations at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality."
Penny stared at him like he'd suddenly grown another head. "Participate in the what?" she asked. Nothing Sheldon had just said had made any sense to her.
In his chair Leonard was silently groaning. Right, go ahead and insult our guest's beliefs, Sheldon! he silently shouted at his roommate. Not that he believed in astrology, either, but he wasn't going to say that in front of her! Damage control time. "I think what Sheldon's trying to say," Leonard said quickly, "is that Sagittarius wouldn't have been our first guess."
"Oh, I know," Penny nodded knowingly. "People think I'm a water sign."
Sheldon was staring at Leonard. Do you hear this? his eyes seemed to say. Leonard shook his head, making a cutting gesture intending to keep him silent; miraculously, it worked.
"Let's see, what else?" Penny murmured. "Oh, I'm also writing a screenplay!" she told them, proudly. "It's about this sensitive girl who comes to L.A. from Lincoln, Nebraska to be an actress, and winds up a waitress at the Cheesecake Factory."
Leonard leaned toward her, truly interested. "Oh, so it's based on you, then," he said.
"Oh, no," Penny shook her head. "I'm from Omaha."
"Ah, I see," Leonard nodded agreement. "Well, if that was a movie I would go see it!"
Penny beamed proudly. "I know, right!" she said. She sat back on the couch. "Let's see, what else…? Well, I'm a vegetarian. Except for fish. And an occasional steak. I love steak!"
"Interesting," Sheldon said. "Leonard can't process—"
"That's enough, Sheldon!" Leonard cut him off. Sheldon looked miffed at being interrupted but said nothing.
After a few seconds of thinking Penny shrugged. "I guess that's it," she said. "That's the story of Penny." She fell silent, brushing back her hair. For a moment she appeared about to say something else, but she didn't. In fact, her whole demeanor was changing as Leonard watched. She was withdrawing from them! he thought, panicked. What did they do wrong?!
"Well," she said, getting up. "Thank you both for lunch. I ought to be getting back to my apartment. My shower isn't working and I have to call the building manager and let him know. I hope he can get it working soon."
"Our shower works," Leonard blurted without thinking. Sheldon looked at him in alarm.
"Really?" Penny said, looking hopeful again. "Would it be totally weird if I used it?"
"Yes!" Sheldon said, looking horrified at the thought of a strange woman in his shower.
Leonard spun on him. "No!" he said sharply.
"No?" Sheldon repeated, surprised. Something very weird was going on here, but exactly what it was he hadn't quite figured out.
"No," Leonard said, firmly this time. He pointed. "It's right down the hall," he said.
Penny looked immensely grateful. "Thanks. You guys are really sweet," she said, looking at both of them. She walked down the hall into the bathroom and closed the door.
By now Sheldon had figured out what was so weird about this situation. "Well, this is an interesting development," he said, putting down his nearly-empty container and getting up to get something for them to drink, two bottles of orange soda.
Leonard didn't like the way he'd said that. "How so?" he asked, cautiously.
"Firstly, it has been some time since we've had a woman take her clothes off in our apartment," Sheldon pointed out, getting the bottles out of the refrigerator.
"That's not true," Leonard said, always eager to point out when Sheldon made a mistake. "Remember at Thanksgiving, my grandmother with Alzheimer's had that episode…"
"Point taken," Sheldon admitted. He restated his assertion. "It has been some time since we've had a woman take her clothes off, after which we didn't want to rip our eyes out."
"The worst part was watching her carve that turkey," Leonard remembered.
Sheldon retrieved a bottle opener from a kitchen drawer. "So, what exactly are you trying to accomplish here?" he asked Leonard; though the answer seemed obvious to him now, he wanted to make sure Leonard understood his own carnal impulses as well as he did.
Leonard didn't like the way he'd said that. "Excuse me?"
Well, he's going to make me say it, Sheldon sighed to himself. "That woman in there is not going to have sex with you," he told Leonard, opening the first bottle of orange soda.
"Well, I'm not trying to have sex with her," Leonard demurred.
"Oh, good," Sheldon said, relieved. "Then you won't be disappointed." He threw the first bottle cap into the trash.
"What makes you think she wouldn't have sex with me?" Leonard inquired, a little irritated with Sheldon's implication that it could never happen. "I'm a male and she's a female," he pointed out.
"Yes, but not of the same species," Sheldon said, opening the second bottle and throwing the cap into the trash.
"I'm not going to engage in hypotheticals here," Leonard said, grabbing one of the bottles and walking over to lean against the hallway column. "I'm just trying to be a good neighbor."
"Oh, of course," Sheldon retorted, returning to his spot on the couch. To Leonard's ear, it sounded like a rare instance of Sheldon being sarcastic. Sheldon did not always grasp sarcasm, especially the way Leonard employed it.
"That's not to say if a carnal relationship were to develop, that I wouldn't participate," Leonard suggested, with a little hopeful optimism. Then, remembering how most of his sexual relationships had gone in the past, he muttered, "However briefly…"
Sheldon picked up the container with his last few bites of chicken vindaloo. "Do you think this possibility will be helped or hindered when she discovers your Luke Skywalker No More Tears shampoo?"
"It's Darth Vader shampoo," Leonard corrected him. There was a knock on the door. "Luke Skywalker's the conditioner."
Leonard opened the apartment door, finding Howard Wolowitz and Rajesh Koothrappali on the other side. Howard was holding a jewel case with a DVD in it.
"Wait'll you see this," he said, walking past Leonard into the room.
"It's fantastic—unbelievable!" Raj said, making double thumbs-up. For some reason he was wearing a red ball cap with "42" on it. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Leonard wondered. Howard was making a beeline toward the TV, while Raj was headed for the kitchen.
"See what?" Leonard asked, annoyed. He did not need these guys barging in here right now!
Howard popped the DVD Sheldon had queued up out of the player and stuck his disc in. "It's a Stephen Hawking lecture from M.I.T. in 1974," he announced.
"This isn't a good time," Leonard tried to insist, wanting them gone. He didn't need Howard trying to put the moves on Penny before he even got a chance to talk to her again alone!
"It's before he became a creepy computer voice," Howard said, mimicking Hawking's current computer-generated speech.
"That's great," Leonard said, with no enthusiasm. "You guys have to go."
"Why?" Raj asked, taking a bottle of water Sheldon offered him.
"It's just not a good time…" Leonard replied, being deliberately vague.
"Leonard has a lady over," Sheldon announced. Leonard winced. No chance of getting these guys out of here now! At least he didn't have to worry about Raj hitting on her. Howard, however was a different problem entirely.
"Yeah, right," Howard said skeptically, using the DVD remote to start the player. "Your grandmother back in town?"
"No," Leonard retorted defensively. Even though he didn't want them here, he was still pretty smug about having a girl in his apartment. In his shower. Probably naked by now… "And she's not a lady, she's just a new neighbor."
Howard looked at Leonard with sudden interest. "Hang on—there really is a lady here?" He stood, looking around the apartment, the DVD forgotten.
"Uh-huh," Leonard said, with some smugness leaking in his tone.
"And you want us out," Howard continued, "because you're anticipating coitus?"
There it was. "I'm not anticipating coitus," Leonard said, annoyed.
"So she's available for coitus?" Howard asked, very interested now.
"Can we please just stop saying 'coitus'?" Leonard snapped.
Sheldon looked at Raj. "Technically, that would be coitus interruptus," he commented, making a minor but obvious joke. Raj nodded, though he didn't quite get the joke.
The bathroom door opened at that moment and Penny came out, wearing nothing but a blue bath towel. Sheldon, embarrassed, averted his eyes. Howard and Raj stared at her, open-mouthed. Leonard's look was more reserved, though he was surprised she just walked into the room like that, even if she only expected him and Sheldon to be there. She was a lot more outgoing than Leonard was.
"Hey," she was saying, "is there a trick to getting it to switch from tub to shower?" She stopped at the end of the hallway, realizing that people other than Leonard and Sheldon were in the apartment. "Oh—hi, sorry," she said, looking surprised but not embarrassed. "Hello!" she said to the group at large.
Howard recovered first. "Enchanté, mademoiselle," he said, with a little flourish and bow, to impress her. "Howard Wolowitz, Cal Tech Department of Applied Physics," he introduced himself. "You may be familiar with some of my work. It's currently orbiting Jupiter's largest moon, taking high-resolution digital photographs."
Behind Howard, Leonard sighed to himself. This was exactly what he feared—Howard was putting the moves on her. It wasn't likely to work, he reminded himself, but she could easily put her off by Howard's manner, ruining any chance of a relationship for Leonard.
She smiled at Howard. "Penny. I work at the Cheesecake Factory."
Leonard decided to break up this little singles meet. "Come on," he said to Penny. "I'll show you the trick with the shower." He and Penny walked toward the bathroom.
"Bonne douce," Howard called after her. Penny stopped and looked back at him. "I'm-I'm sorry?" she said. Did this guy just call her a douche? What the hell?
"It's French for 'good shower,'" Howard smiled. "It's a sentiment I can express in six languages."
Including Klingon, Leonard thought. "Save it for your blog, Howard," Leonard told him. He and Penny walked toward the bathroom.
"See kai tong kwai chow," Howard called after her, in mangled Chinese.
In the bathroom, Leonard fiddled with the valve that diverted water from the tub to the shower head until water began pouring from it. He stood, turning to Penny. "Alright, there it goes," he said. "It sticks, sometimes. I'm sorry."
"Thank you, Leonard," Penny said, smiling at him, though this time her smile seemed a little sad. "I can't tell you how much this means to me."
Leonard smiled back. "Glad to help," he said, wondering what she was thinking as she stood there smiling at him. Naked beneath her towel…
"I didn't want to say this in front of Sheldon or those other guys," Penny went on. "It's been a couple of days since I've had a shower, really." She looked a bit embarrassed. "I suppose you noticed."
"Um," Leonard gulped. "N-no, not really…" I wonder why she hasn't had a shower in a couple of days, he thought to himself.
"It's because of my boyfriend," Penny said. Okay, a boyfriend is not what I wanted to hear about, Leonard winced.
"My ex-boyfriend, really," she went on. "Kurt. We've been together for four year. Four years, and I find out a couple of days ago he's been cheating on me!" He face screwed up in pain and she began to cry.
"Um…" Leonard said. Okay, so they're no longer together, he exulted silently. But he needed to say something sympathetic. "Oh, I'm so sorry… so what happened?" he asked, grabbing a tissue off the back of the toilet and handing it to her.
"What happened," Penny sniffled, "was that when I confronted him about it, he said that if I didn't like it I could leave, so I said 'Fine, I will leave!' and he said 'Fine!' And so I left. I went out and looked for an apartment, and a couple of days ago I found one here in this building, and I've been moving in for the past two days." She dabbed at her eyes, wiping the tears away. "I was really scared moving in," she continued. "I haven't lived alone since I came to California from Nebraska." She smiled at Leonard again. "It's nice I found a place with someone like you living next door."
"It is nice," Leonard agreed. "I hope you'll be very happy here—"
Penny suddenly stepped forward and hugged him. Shocked, Leonard could hardly move, much less think what to do. He was about to hug her back when she stepped away. It had been a standard two-Mississippi hug, though her wearing only a towel had to count for something, Leonard reasoned.
"Thanks for being my friend, Leonard," she said. "And thanks for fixing the shower." She handed him the tissue, pulled back the curtain and stepped inside.
"You're welcome," Leonard said, before he realized what she was doing. "Oh, you're getting in—okay." He turned to beat a hasty retreat, still confused about the almost-naked hug. Damn, if only he'd grabbed his shampoo and conditioner before she saw them!
"Hey, Leonard," Penny said from inside the shower.
"The hair products are Sheldon's," Leonard blurted.
"O-okay," Penny said. Leonard though he heard a muffled giggle. The towel came flying over the shower curtain, landing on the floor. "Um, can I ask you a favor?"
"A favor?" Leonard repeated. What kind of favor could she want, in the context of her taking a shower? There were some intriguing possibilities… "Sure, you could ask me a favor," Leonard said quickly. "I would do you a favor for you."
"It's okay if you say no," Penny told him.
"Oh, I'll probably say yes," Leonard muttered.
"It's just not the kind of thing you ask a guy you just met," Penny said, tentatively.
Leonard pondered what kind of favor that condition might entail. "Wow."
-=o=-
A/N: Well, now that we've come this far, I suppose I should go ahead and finish this alternate first meeting episode. It should be up before too long.
