He glanced around Penny's messy apartment, clothes hanging on the backs of chairs, dishes piling up in the sink. He thought of the way Sheldon wrinkled his nose every time he came over here and barely restrained himself from cleaning. He smiled a little, despite feeling like he was as exposed as a newborn now that Penny knew. She not only knew that he kissed Sheldon but she knew that he was in some kind of turmoil over him, that he wanted what he might never have. She knew all of this and possibly more, depending on exactly what Sheldon had told her.
He sunk into her couch and looked up at her, his robe pulled tightly around him. She had retrieved her coffee cup from the coffee table and sipped it, her green eyes staring over the rim at him. She was perched on the arm of the couch. He sighed, knowing he was going to ask her for all the specifics.
"What…why did Sheldon tell you?" Start with why, it was a good place to start, "did he look upset, or like something was wrong?"
Penny shook her head, her blond hair shaking like tassels around her pale freckled cheeks.
"I went over to borrow some milk for my coffee, and he was up, getting his cereal, and I just asked him what was new. And he said you kissed him,"
Leonard lowered his head, feeling not surprise but a dull kind of wonder that Sheldon truly had no discretion.
"Then what did you say? Tell me everything, Penny, I have no clue here,"
"Well, I said, 'what do you mean, Leonard kissed you?' And he said that he had had a nightmare last night and was upset about it and he went to your room at two in the morning, and that you kissed him, on the lips with tongue. I dragged those details out of him,"
Leonard groaned and looked up at the ceiling. Sheldon. Jesus.
"Yeah, okay, but did he say how he felt about it? Did he say he was upset, or happy, or anything?"
Penny finished her coffee and set the empty cup down, brushed the loose tendrils of hair away from her face and was quiet for a moment.
"Leonard, you've known Sheldon for longer than I have, and out of the two of you you are much more in tune with other people and the things that they think and feel. You know how Sheldon is, he will tell you facts and he'll recount events, but has he ever attached any kind of emotion to those things? We don't know how in touch with his own emotions he is, but even if he has some grasp of that he's never explained any of it to me. He just told me what happened, matter of factly, and he said it was interesting. I asked him if he was upset, of course, because I still had no clear idea of what had happened. He said he wasn't upset,"
Leonard shifted on the couch, blinked his eyes behind his lenses and then took off his glasses and wiped the lenses clean with the edge of his robe.
"You like Sheldon?" she said, peering at him, trying to look into his tiny eyes with her large aqua green ones. He slapped his glasses back on his face and brushed his hair off his forehead.
"Yeah, of course! I kissed him, didn't I? He came to my room at two in the morning, all upset over some dream about his father and I put my hand on his shoulder and I pulled him close to me and I kissed him! But now I can't figure out if it means anything to him. Interesting doesn't mean anything, lots of things are interesting to him, lots of things that are just useless information to everybody else! Does he think of it as just as interesting as tomatoes being a fruit but people think they are vegetables? Does he think of it as just as interesting as the Romans putting spiced toast in their punch bowls and that's why it's called a toast? I mean, Penny, I don't know where he is on this, what he thinks, if he's even capable of a relationship in the same way that I am. I can't win here. I like this about him, I like how aloof he is, how unencumbered by the demands of other people. I see this, this way he has of not really needing anybody, but it's ironic, because I need him. I just don't know if this is a possibility,"
