A/N: This is the pg-13 edit of this story to get past this site's pg-13/tv-14 definition of 'M rating' which certainly doesn't stand for 'Mature' in any dictionary I've ever read. If you want the actual Mature version of this story, go to AO3, same title, E-rating.
As Sheldon rounded the last landing before the final set of steps up to the fourth floor of their apartment building, he felt the familiar prickling sensation on the back of his neck of an undesired presence somewhere nearby.
But as his roommate Leonard was rambling on about whatever it was that he was rambling on about, Sheldon continued on up the stairs like there was nothing wrong, simply on high alert should something start to happen. However, he didn't smell any of the normal odors of a demon, vampire, or any other supernatural creature nearby, so maybe it was nothing, 'just' a rat in the vents or elevator shaft or something — gross, unhygienic, and just another reason that this apartment was a dump, but not life-threatening so long as you weren't bitten or touched the vermin.
Making it up to their landing he noticed that the door across the hall was open and a young female human was standing inside, but as there still wasn't any evil creature smell he turned his back to her and started to open their door, still listening out intently for any evil sounds as he did so.
"New neighbor?" asked Leonard, who was staring at the girl who clearly wasn't their old neighbor — even a blind man could have seen that.
"Evidently," Sheldon answered dryly, wondering not for the first time how the homunculus had gotten himself a Ph.D.
Given his slutiness Sheldon would have thought that he had slept with all of the right teachers and staff members, but Sheldon had never seen him actually be successful in his attempts at sleeping with every female with a pulse (and several without, not that Leonard was aware of that, of course), so that theory seemed unlikely.
"Significant improvement over the old neighbor," Leonard sighed wistfully, as if he legitimately thought that he had a snowflake's chance in hell of getting into her rather short jean shorts.
"Two hundred pound transvestite with a skin condition, yes, she is," Sheldon answered with a roll of his eyes, stating the very obvious — the same obvious that said aforementioned blind man could still see despite not having stopped being blind.
But the girl had apparently heard at least the noise of their talking if not necessarily the actual words and turned around, and Sheldon realized why he hadn't been able to smell her. She didn't smell, because she wasn't a creature. She was a good ol' fashioned human girl, midwest if he had to guess. A perfectly ordinary, blonde, non-threatening — vampire slayer.
Ok, so cross out the non-threatening part.
"Oh, hi!" she greeted them brightly.
"Hi," Leonard replied all dewy-eyed.
"Buffy or Faith?" Sheldon asked.
As Leonard turned to stare at him in confusion for asking this random stranger girl a semi-obscure tv show question, the girl walked over to the open door and casually leaned against the doorframe before answering with a slight smirk, "I prefer the version where Angel succeeds and reforms Faith without Buffy or the Council screwing things up for both of them, and she doesn't go to jail."
Deciding that it was best if he got the topic away from Sheldon-weirdness, that even weirder the girl seemed to be able to talk, Leonard quickly looked back over at the blonde and said, "We don't mean to interrupt, we live across the hall."
But the blonde was still staring at Sheldon, who was staring right back at her though Leonard couldn't see that part from where he stood slightly in front of the taller man looking at the blonde woman and not his roommate.
"Got a name, Angel? I'm Penny."
"Sheldon. And this is my roommate, Leonard — he's normal," Sheldon answered.
"Yeah, I could tell," Penny replied. "Well, I need to get back to unpacking, but I suppose we'll be seeing a lot of each other since we're neighbors."
"A lot sounds better than none," Sheldon answered before turning back to the door of 4A that he had already unlocked, and pushing it open.
But as he walked inside, Leonard asked him in a whisper, "Should we have invited her for lunch?"
"No," Sheldon answered bluntly, thankful for his persona of being brusque and not liking people, to avoid having to come up with a better excuse not to invite the him-slayer over for lunch. Because, 'No, I'd really rather not, since she's a vampire slayer, and I'm a vampire, and oh yeah, both of those things exist along with demons and other supernatural creatures' simply wasn't an option. "We don't invite strangers over for lunch, nor did we buy food for a third person."
But Leonard was already reduced to thinking with his lonely dick, and completely ignoring Sheldon said, "I think we should be good neighbors, invite her over, make her feel welcome."
"We never invited Louis-slash-Louise over," Sheldon argued, rolling his eyes but also knowing a lost cause when he saw one.
"Well then, that was wrong of us. We need to widen our circle," Leonard said.
Sheldon highly doubted that if Louis had been replaced by literally anyone other than an early twenties-looking hot chick, who to the normal eye might seem like she'd be easy, Leonard would have been nearly as interested in inviting said new neighbor over.
"Any wider than four and our circle is going to break and become a curved line segment, not a circle at all," Sheldon replied in a last ditch effort to avoid what could be a very awkward lunch.
Or worse — Penny could take her role as Buffy/reformed Faith/Cordelia way too seriously, and flirt with him.
Of course, Leonard's dick wasn't listening to a word coming out of Sheldon's mouth, and said, "I'm going to invite her over. We'll have a nice meal and chat."
Opening the door and walking across the hall, Leonard tapped on Penny's still open doorframe and totally not even more awkwardly than the upcoming luncheon said, "Hi. Again."
"Hi," Penny replied politely, glancing up at Sheldon (who had followed Leonard over to make sure that he didn't make too big a fool of himself) for any clues as to what was going on.
Sheldon merely rolled his eyes in lieu of an answer.
"Hi," Leonard repeated.
Penny merely raised an eyebrow back, not about to get into a back-and-forth of 'hi's', so Leonard finally got to his point.
"Anyway, um. We brought home Indian food. And, um. I know that moving can be stressful, and I find that when I'm undergoing stress, that good food and company can have a comforting effect. Also, curry is a natural laxative, and I don't have to tell you that, uh, a clean colon is just one less thing to worry about."
Sheldon was visibly cringing where he was standing behind Leonard, while Penny was clearly trying to hold in her own laughter.
Shaking his head apologetically at Penny, Sheldon said, "Leonard, I'm no expert here, but I believe in the context of a luncheon invitation, you might want to skip the reference to bowel movements."
Taking Sheldon's cue, Penny said to Leonard in a surprised tone, "Oh — you're inviting me over to eat?"
"Uh, yes," Leonard replied embarrassedly — how could his socially incapable roommate have been the one to actually inform their new neighbor that they were inviting her over for lunch instead of him?
A quick glance up at Sheldon told Penny everything that she needed to know about how enthused he was at the idea of having lunch with her, so she immediately responded enthusiastically, "Oh, that's so nice, I'd love to!"
As Sheldon rolled her eyes at her she pushed past where Sheldon and Leonard were standing right outside her door closing it behind her as she went, and walked across the hall into apartment 4A, Sheldon having left that door open as he followed Leonard out a minute earlier. Leonard quickly hurried after her, Sheldon following after him at a slower pace wondering just how badly this was going to go, and if it was going to risk exposing his world to his blissfully ignorant roommate.
Once they were all inside 4A and Sheldon had closed the door behind them, Penny walked up to the chalkboard close to the kitchen and said, "Wow, you've really used your time well — I am assuming this is yours, Sheldon?"
There was a dry-erase board on the other side of the room with mathematical scribblings on it as well that she had no hope of ever understanding either, but dry-erase boards had a glossy finish to them that were semi-reflective, so she guessed that probably wasn't his on the off chance his roommate noticed that Sheldon's reflection never appeared on said glossy surface when he was working at it. It was much easier to just avoid ever being close enough to the dry-erase boards not to have the reflection that he should, than having to work in front of it all the time.
"Yeah, it's just some quantum mechanics, with a little string theory doodling around the edges. That part there, that's just a joke, it's a spoof of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation," Sheldon answered modestly as he pointed out the various equations as he mentioned them.
"So you're like one of those beautiful mind genius guys," Penny said, still looking in awe at his work, knowing impressive work when she saw it even if she didn't understand a single variable or derivative of it.
"Yeah."
He wasn't going to lie, no matter how much he preferred avoiding the spotlight when it came to people he didn't know very well. And it could be helpful that the slayer know that he was doing something scientifically productive with his time.
"This is really impressive," Penny replied.
But before she could go on, Leonard petulantly whined from the other side of the room, trying to draw the smoking hot chick's attention to himself instead, "I have a board. If you like boards, this is my board."
"If you mean a derivative restatement of the kind of stuff you can find scribbled on the wall of any men's room at MIT, then sure — you have a board," Sheldon retorted, walking towards where Leonard was standing next to the dry-erase board.
As the boys began arguing over science and mathematics that she would never understand, Penny tuned them out and walked over to the couch and sat down, reaching for the bag of food that Leonard had set down on the coffee table upon entering.
But after a minute she heard them finally quit arguing, and then Sheldon say, "Um, Penny — that's where I sit."
"Too much sunlight if you sit anywhere else?" Penny smirked back up at him as she turned to look at where he was standing right behind the couch looking down at her disapprovingly.
But she also quickly scooted over (noticeably surprising Leonard where he was watching the whole scene unfold with a look of dread, obviously not used to anyone just moving over because Sheldon said that a particular seat was his), as she wasn't about to pick a fight with a vampire over seating positions, especially one she was trying to see if was friendly. And potential sex-partner material — it wasn't just Buffy, or Faith or Cordy who could fuck a vampire. She did, however, only slide over one cushion, so that she would still be sitting right next to him while they ate.
"As much as skin cancer is a much bigger risk than almost anyone takes seriously, no," Sheldon replied, giving her a pointed look as he walked around the end of the couch and sat down in his spot, reaching into the food bag and getting out his own food. "In the winter that seat is close enough to the radiator to remain warm, and yet not so close as to cause perspiration. In the summer it's directly in the path of a cross breeze created by open windows there, and there. It faces the television at an angle that is neither direct, thus discouraging conversation, nor so far wide to create a parallax distortion."
"Wow — thorough," Penny said in surprise. "You really put a lot of thought into where you sit. I just choose somewhere that looks comfy. Oh, and I suppose has a good view of everyone I'll be sitting with — you know me, the chatty extrovert, wants to be able to see and talk to everyone."
"And I imagine good ingress and egress, so you can jump up and greet anyone you need to, especially anyone new just coming in," Sheldon said.
"I like being polite and meeting new people," Penny answered with a knowing smirk.
Leonard felt like they were talking in some kind of code that only they knew, but — well, Sheldon was Sheldon, so while code seemed like the only way he knew how to talk sometimes no one normal ever understood him, certainly not some ditzy blonde who — well, what was it that she did do?
"So, uh, Penny, do you have some sort of a job?" he asked her, both to get an answer to his own question, and to distract her from her secret conversation with Sheldon if she really was somehow impossibly having one — she did seem to understand, or at least accept his need to have his spot, after all, which wasn't something normal people did.
"Oh, yeah, I'm a waitress at the Cheesecake Factory," Penny answered, conveniently neglecting to mention that it was only a cover to hide her real job of protecting the world from bad supernatural beings. "But I'm really an aspiring actress — I just waitress to pay the bills until my big break."
'Doing a damn good job right now acting like you're a normal blonde', Sheldon thought to himself.
"I'm also writing my own screenplay — it's about this sensitive girl who comes to L.A. from Lincoln, Nebraska to be an actress, making do for the time being as a waitress at the Cheesecake Factory. But then she suddenly has her life upended by finding out that she's destined to fight evil creatures like demons and vampires."
"So it's based on your life? Well, obviously except for the demons and vampires part, as everyone knows those don't really exist," Leonard said.
"No — I'm from Omaha," Penny replied in a 'Duh, how could you think this was about my life? Does that sound anything like me?' tone.
"Well, if that was a movie I would go see it," Leonard replied, still trying to butter her up.
"I know, right?" Penny said enthusiastically. "Okay, let's see, what else? Um, that's about it. That's the story of Penny."
Sheldon had to restrain himself from snorting, knowing that was far from the real story of Penny, slayer extraordinaire. He might not have known the real story, but that certainly wasn't it — except probably the part about being from Omaha, and maybe the parts about wanting to be an actress in her spare time and writing her own story, and definitely the part about being a slayer that Leonard had laughed off exactly as expected, but it still left out her entire real story about becoming and being a slayer.
But Leonard was busy saying, "Well, it sounds wonderful," believing every bit that she was just a normal midwestern blonde coming to California to try to become a famous actress.
All the while as they talked they had all been eating, and Penny now set down her empty container.
Looking over at Sheldon sitting next to her she put on her best innocent, helpless-girl face and said, "I really hate to ask this, but you see, my stupid shower doesn't work yet, and I'm all gross from moving — is there any chance you might be willing to let me use your shower? Just this once, of course!"
Sheldon glared at her, but Leonard's dick just had blurt out, "Absolutely! No problem at all. It's right down the hall."
"Thanks. You guys are really sweet," Penny replied sweetly, still looking straight at Sheldon. "Let me just go grab some clothes to change into and I'll be right back."
She jumped up and hurried back across the hall, giving Sheldon time to ask Leonard, "So what exactly are you trying to accomplish here?"
"Excuse me?"
"That woman is not going to have sex with you," Sheldon said, knowing exactly what Leonard was trying to accomplish, having known it since they'd first laid eyes on the slayer.
"Well, I'm not trying to have sex with her," Leonard lied.
"Good — then you won't be disappointed," Sheldon said.
"What makes you think she wouldn't have sex with me? — I'm a male, and she's a female," Leonard whined, offended by Sheldon saying that he couldn't get her into bed.
"Yes, but not of the same species," Sheldon answered completely honestly — slayers really were completely different from normal humans, even if they always looked exactly the same, unlike vamped-out vampires or demons with their natural faces.
"I'm not going to engage in hypotheticals here, I'm just trying to be a good neighbor," Leonard said.
"Oh, of course," Sheldon replied, not believing a word coming out of his roommate's mouth.
Something Leonard proved a second later as he continued on, "That's not to say that if a carnal relationship were to develop that I wouldn't participate. However briefly."
Fortunately any further discussion was avoided by the door opening again, and Penny skipping back in to the room with her clothes wrapped up in a bath towel.
"Sheldon, you wouldn't mind showing me how the shower works, would you?" she asked cheerfully as she grabbed his arm and began pulling him towards the bathroom without waiting for a response.
Rolling his eyes at her and ignoring the shocked look on Leonard's face, Sheldon stood up and followed her back to the bathroom, wondering what exactly her plan was.
Once they were inside Penny quickly flipped the lock on the door before motioning towards the shower handles with a pointed look at Sheldon, as she stood with her back against the door. Knowing that she was keeping him from escaping, he walked over to the shower and flipped it on, turning it to the right temperature before immediately flipping it from tub to shower, figuring that it would have plenty of time to warm up before Penny ever actually got under the water. Then he turned back to look at her.
"Finally, free to talk," she sighed happily now that the water was running to cover their voices. "So you're a vampire, and I'm a slayer — we going to have a problem?"
"Not as long as you don't start it," Sheldon answered. "I don't suck blood or kill, and I keep an eye on the local demon, creature, and vampire populations, make sure nothing gets out of hand. I really am a lot like Angel."
Penny pushed herself away from the door and walked right up to him, gently resting her hands on his chest. "Then fancy a shower, Mr Nice Vamp? We could talk some more, or...well, not talk some more..."
"Sex? Seriously? You just met me," Sheldon replied.
"I'm a good judge of character — exhibit A, I didn't drive a stake through this heart of yours when I first saw you," Penny answered as she flexed the fingers of her right hand over where his heart was located.
"You didn't do that because there was a witness," Sheldon retorted. "You would have acted innocent, and waited for a good time to strike. Still could be, for all I know — there could easily be a wooden stake wrapped up in your clothes over there."
"It's a nice knife in my boot, and it's just to give me an opportunity to escape if you decide to get too handsy," Penny smirked back.
"You literally just asked me for sex!" Sheldon exclaimed in a whisper.
"Oh, that kind of handsy is more than welcome," Penny smirked back salaciously. "It's the trying to drain my blood or otherwise kill me handsy that I'm just being careful about — so I guess more fangy than handsy, technically. Now what do you say — a good shagging to get the — well, definitely not blood — flowing?"
"For trying to get into my pants, you really aren't buttering me up."
"Please, like you want that," Penny retorted, rolling her eyes.
Then she stepped back and quickly pulled her light blue shirt up over her head, leaving her standing there in just her teal underwire t-shirt bra, jean shorts, boots, and bubbly personality.
"All yours — you just have to take it."
Sheldon let out a sigh, looking off to the side for a second as he thought about every reason that this was a terrible, terrible, bad idea, before suddenly pushing her back into the door and looming over her, hands planted on the door on both sides of her head. But far from imposed or scared, Penny merely took the opportunity to slip her hands under his shirts and run them up his chest, looking him back in the eyes completely unafraid as she kicked off her boots.
With another swift motion, Sheldon gave in and ripped his shirts up over his head before moving his hands down to her jean shorts and undoing the button and zipper before shoving them down off of her hips. A shake of her hips and Penny had them all the way down on the floor, her own hands going to his pants. She quickly had them unbuttoned and unzipped as well as Sheldon kicked off his own shoes, and between the two of them the tan plaid material joined her own shorts and shirt on the floor of the bathroom. Both immediately leaned down to strip off their socks before straightening up again, leaving both of them standing there in just their underwear.
Sheldon's hand immediately went between Penny's legs, eliciting a small moan from her. Penny however didn't merely want some casual groping over her underwear, and so she quickly pushed his boxers down his legs before stepping back from him slightly. And then before Sheldon could question in his mind if he had done something wrong (though personally she thought that her making him completely naked should be enough to prevent him from thinking any thoughts along those lines), she quickly pushed her underwear down her legs before reaching behind her to unclasp her bra, letting it fall down her arms and join the rest of their clothes scattered across the bathroom floor. Both of them stared at the other's nakedness taking in each other's assets, but only for a few seconds before the need for more became too strong for Penny.
"Shower?" she said, nodding over towards the running shower.
Sheldon simply nodded, so Penny walked over and stepped around the shower curtain, Sheldon following her into the hot spray.
~.~
Meanwhile, Leonard was out in the living room wondering where Sheldon had gotten to, as the shower had been running for several minutes now but the lanky theoretical physicist still hadn't come back out into the living room yet.
He was just about to go peek into Sheldon's bedroom to see if he had hid himself away in there after having to deal with an unexpected guest for lunch, and then open the bathroom door under the pretense of making sure that Sheldon wasn't bothering Penny while really just hoping to catch a glimpse of Penny's naked (or even partly naked) body, when the front door opened and Howard and Raj walked in talking about a lecture that they had found, distracting Leonard for the moment.
The three of them had been discussing the lecture for several minutes before Howard realized that Sheldon wasn't there giving them a lecture of his own about the lecture, and asked Leonard, "Hey — where's Sheldon?"
"You know, I'm actually not sure," Leonard answered, remembering that he had been about to go look for his roommate right before Howard and Raj had shown up. "We have a new next door neighbor — smoking hot blonde — and she asked him to show her how the shower works since hers is apparently broken or something so I volunteered her ours, but he should have been back by now. Should have been back before you two even showed up, the shower had been running for several minutes."
So the three of them walked down the hallway together to the bathroom, briefly peeking in Sheldon's bedroom along the way to make sure that he wasn't hiding in there and somehow hadn't heard Howard and Raj's entrance, before opening the bathroom door.
Or trying to and finding that it was locked, leaving them standing in the hallway clueless as to what to do now, or what could be happening in said locked bathroom.
As for what was happening on the other side of said locked door, Sheldon was fingering Penny to her first orgasm of the afternoon. His lips were pressed firmly against the crook of her neck as his normal, non-vampire teeth lightly scraped and nipped at her tan skin, and one of Penny's hands reached back over her head to tangle in his hair holding him where he was, as the other reached around to grab his ass and keep the front of his body pressed flush against her back.
Penny cried out silently as she toppled over the edge, wishing that he was inside her — but that would come soon enough.
She barely gave her orgasm time to subside before she spun in his arms and kissed him hard, demanding more. So Sheldon obligingly pushed her backwards the couple of feet until her back hit the front wall of the shower, and lined himself up with her. Without warning he thrust into her, Penny gasping out in surprised pleasure before leaning forward and biting his shoulder as her arms wrapped around his back and she clung to him tightly. Sheldon set up a steady pounding rhythm that soon had her panting and shaking in his arms.
As she neared her rapidly approaching second orgasm of the afternoon, Penny moved her lips from his shoulder up to his own lips in a hungry kiss, a bruising clash of sensitive flesh as rough as what was going on below between her legs. When she soon hurtled over the metaphorical edge, her fingernails make long, red, angry-looking scratch marks across his back as he swallowed up her cries, her orgasm quickly causing his own to follow.
They both saw stars for a long time, it the first time that either of them had been able to have sex in years, vampirism making it difficult to sleep with normal women and not hurt them because of his strength and drain them from the heady smell of their endorphins and lust, and slaying taking up so much time and making any kind of long-term commitment to anyone very difficult.
But when they did finally come down from their highs, Penny sighed contentedly, "Damn, that was good. We should do it again sometime."
"I have a feeling if I don't want to sleep with one eye open on the lookout for ill-placed wooden stakes, I'm going to have to say yes."
"Oh, come on, Broody and Alone," Penny teased back. "You enjoyed that just as much as I did. It's not hard to see you've been dry at least as long as me, and it's little surprise as a vamp. I'm one on the few women out there you can safely sleep with, so we should take advantage of this, reduce both our stress levels and enable us to perform all our various duties better."
"We're still a vampire and a slayer," Sheldon replied. "We're supposed to be mortal enemies."
"Hot blonde — naked in your bed every night," Penny counter-offered, reaching up and cupping the underside of her breasts to make them even more prominent to his sight.
"It wasn't terrible," Sheldon relented. "I suppose we can probably do it again at least one more time."
"Not quite the enthusiasm I was hoping for, but I'll take it for the time being," Penny smirked back at him. "But for now, instead of going for a third and second round respectively, we should actually shower and get back out to your roommate before he becomes too suspicious of what's going on in here. I saw him trying to undress me with his eyes from the moment he saw me."
"When you went to get your clothes he told me that he wasn't trying to have intercourse with you, but he was lying," Sheldon responded. "Of course, if he knew what you really were and that our world even exists, he'd probably be much less inclined. And while he'll be jealous of the fact you made me stay in here with you while you showered, it's irreconcilable in his mind that I would have been having coitus. He and our two other friends think I'm asexual since I don't chase every pretty thing like they do, an idea I've done nothing to dissuade them of since it normally works in my favor of being left alone and hiding my vampirism."
"Good to know," Penny replied with a nod. "It will make sneaking around that much easier. Now grab that soap and start washing me down as I get my hair — we still have to get back out there and deal with his flirting, and act like we're two normal human beings."
