Sheldon

Leonard is surprisingly strong for a homunculus. He sits on my chest, his densely packed body pining me to the floor of the Italian restaurant as he succeeds in blocking my vision with a wad of slippery spaghetti noodles.

"You like that?" he hisses, spraying my cheeks with remnants of his cheese-less ravioli. "You like that, Sheldon?"

Although I am given to believe that he is asking a rhetorical question, I feel the need to answer anyway. "No, Leonard," I say. "I don't enjoy what you're doing to me." My hand blindly traces the groove in the tile beside me – I seek out a weapon to defeat this overly cocky hobbit who aims to destroy me. My fingers run into what feels like one of the table's appetizing garlic breadsticks. I grip it as I would a knife.

When there is a change in kinetic energy, work equals force times distance. The force I am applying during my upswing of the breadstick is roughly 210 newtons. The estimated distance between Leonard's face and the starting position of the breadstick is 0.6 meters. By these calculations, 126 joules is equivalent to the work involved in stabbing a breadstick up Leonard's right nostril.

Leonard falls back, picking a severed piece of bread from his nose. "What the hell, Sheldon?"

I roll over onto all fours, my eyes locked on Leonard in preparation for another assault.

He lunges out to slap me – I parry his blow with my broken plate.

"Ow, Sheldon," he moans, clutching his bruising hand.

The air vent is directly above us now. I roll out of the way to avoid wind resistance so that my hand can deliver a particularly lethal hit, provided that Leonard gets any closer. Leonard however, seems to realize that we have engaged in full-fledged warfare – he knocks a chair over and uses it as a shield. He proceeds to chuck silverware at me.

"Really, Penny?" Leonard demands from his cowardly hiding spot. "Him?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Penny asks, staying out of the crossfire.

"Sheldon is the most selfish," begins Leonard, throwing my own water glass at me, "self-centered – "

"Let me stop you there," I say, wiping aqua from my eyes, "before your speech becomes too redundant."

Leonard releases an animalistic war cry as he hugs the chair to his chest, gets to his feet, and begins running at me with it. I roll out of the way just in time to trip him; he tumbles over the chair, face-first onto the floor. He does something of a summersault before colliding with a nearby table. He recovers and looks over his shoulder. He turns and slowly gets to his feet without taking his eyes off of me.

Never in my youth have I ever seen anyone look at me in such a way.

Oh, dear Lord. The man is going to kill me.

"Think about the consequences of your actions, Leonard," I say, cowering against a leg of our table. He starts towards me at an unhurried, but calculated pace. "Murdering me is strictly forbidden in the Roommate Agreement."

"You lied to me. Where in the Roommate Agreement is that allowed?" Leonard demands, still walking towards me.

"I never said I wasn't dating Penny," I argue, highly affronted. "Perhaps we can discuss this before – "

"No. There will be no discussion." He wipes his bloody nose.

At this point, our tumble about the restaurant has received a sizable audience – they form a circle around us as if Leonard and I were partaking in a boxing match. "I'm calling the police," someone cries with excitement, clearly never having called the authorities before.

"No!" says Penny. "No police! We're leaving." She steps between us to bend down and touch my cheek. "You okay?"

"No, we're not leaving," says Leonard. "Not until I kill Sheldon. Move out of the way, Penny."

"Hear that, ladies and gentleman?" I call out. "Attempted murder!" To Leonard, I say, "You'll be tried in court for this."

"I'll be tried in court for actual murder," Leonard replies, reaching around Penny to grab the front of my shirt. He pulls me up to my feet – odd choice; I tower over him.

I slap him in the face.

He slaps me back.

This goes on for a while.

"I can't," slap, "believe," slap, "you'd pick," slap, "him," slap, "over," slap, "me," Leonard says to Penny.

Penny looks at me with soft eyes. "He's a good guy."

"Hear," slap, "that?" I ask Leonard smugly. "I'm a good," slap, "guy!" I slap Leonard's glasses off his face.

He grabs my hands to still them; he looks over his shoulder at Penny. "You have nothing in common with him. You two aren't even on the same level. Sheldon's brilliant but completely obnoxious, and you're – "

"Oh," says Penny, placing her hands on her hips; this is a sign I've learned to associate with danger. "So, what you're saying is that I'm not smart enough for Sheldon?"

Good Lord, I could have come up with that. Although, even with my "obnoxiousness," I don't have the audacity to say it to her outright.

"Well, yeah," says Leonard.

"I was smart enough for you," says Penny, her tone dripping with venom. Now, it appears as if she may join in the fray.

The anger diminishes from Leonard's voice. "That's not…That's not what I was getting at." He releases my hands to bend down and put his glasses back on; he stands back up to talk to Penny. "C'mon, Penny. This is Sheldon we're talking about." He looks at me, revulsion in every crevice of his face. "He's a loser. He'll never be able to love a human being more than he loves himself."

I feel surprisingly stung by this.

"That's not true," says Penny defiantly, and I nod. Decent female, that one.

"Well, let's hear him say it, then," says Leonard, pointing to me. "C'mon, Sheldon. Prove me wrong."

I open my mouth to speak, but am interrupted by two police officers parting the crowd.

xxxxx

Leonard

Half an hour after our restaurant brawl, Sheldon and I find ourselves in a large holding cell at the police station. There are three other men in the cell with us, and one of them appears to be homeless.

"Ruffian," says Sheldon, addressing the homeless man sitting on the low bench attached to the far wall, "that's my spot. You have to move."

"Sheldon," I say, massaging my throbbing temples, "leave the man alone before you get yourself killed." Not that I care.

"Leonard, you forget that I've been imprisoned here before. That gives me Clink Cred."

I'm just going to stop listening to him like I should have on the first day we met. I should have just walked away. I shouldn't have become his roommate and friend. After all, look at all the good it's done me.

When the homeless man still refuses to move, Sheldon joins me at the entrance to the cell. He doesn't touch the bars with his hands, but he leans his back against them. He crosses his arms. "Because I know Penny will force me to do this later, I'll just say it now: I suppose I owe you an apology."

I glance at him; I'm pleased to note that the skin below his right eye is swollen and red. With any luck, he'll have a black eye. "I'm listening."

"I'm…sorry," says Sheldon, clearly struggling. "I should have informed you sooner of my Relationship Agreement with Penny."

I wince, feeling as if I've been punched in the gut. "She signed a contract?"

He jerks his face towards me in the realization that he's said something to hurt me. "I…Yes," he says. "I'm sorry."

I've never had Sheldon apologize to me so solemnly before. Despite this, there's something in his eye that lets me know it's not over. That Penny isn't just a one-time thing for him, or some kind of psychotic experiment. I feel a lump growing in my throat. "You actually like her, don't you?"

He doesn't answer me at first. Then, he says, "It was an accident."

I press my face against the bars. Does he love her? "You should have told me."

"I know," Sheldon says. Then he adds, "Tell me how to proceed, here. Under normal circumstances, I'd offer you a hot beverage and my condolences. However, as the liquid in the closest proximity is that toilet water over there, and we seem to be lacking mugs and a tea kettle, the only thing I can think to do is to provide you a hearty clap on the shoulder." He half-heartedly raises his hand, but I shake my head.

"It'll take me a little bit to get over this, Sheldon," I say. "Tea, toilet water, or otherwise isn't going to help."

He lowers his hand. "I'm sorry about the breadstick."

I nod and sigh. "I'm sorry about the spaghetti."

xxxxx

A/N: Another chapter. Man, I'm just on a roll. This is just a side note, but as I was watching TBBT last night, I just want to point out how much I hate Sheldon's hair now. It looks so stupid! I want his old haircut back. Okay. Now, back to this story. Review.