Apocalypse Week
Chapter 8: The Day After Yesterday
Penny arrived early the next morning, despite her late night, worried that Sheldon might need some coaching in order to face Leonard. She needn't have worried, since Sheldon had been finding ways around not out-right keeping a secret from Leonard for some time now.
She was a little concerned to find Howard and Raj sitting on the couch, Krispy Kreme coffee and doughnuts in hand, like the weirdly eager little beavers they were. Penny had to check the time twice to make sure she wasn't reading it wrong in exhaustion. She wasn't. They were just strange.
They were snarfing down pastries all lined up on the couch, Penny allowing Sheldon his seat for once. Even Sheldon was eating his doughnut with a lot less finesse than usual, and Penny wondered if nocturnal activities gave him an appetite.
That wasn't a thought she was touching with a ten-foot pole today.
Leonard, last to arrive, stumbled in bleary eyed, a patchy beard having grown overnight, and drawn by the scent of coffee. He grabbed the last remaining biodegradable cup and gulped down the contents despite the scalding nature and slightly burnt taste. Then, with almost wild eyes and a total disregard for Sheldon's presence, he wiped his mouth on the back of his hoodie sleeve. "Someone tried to break into my car last night," Leonard informed the four of them, voice tight and high with shock, clutching his potted plant to his chest like a safety net. "Broke a lock and a window."
"Maybe if you had an adequate deterrent system, thieves wouldn't see your car as a viable option," Sheldon answered, back turned as he threw out the breakfast containers. He seemed to be taking out pots. Yes. That was a frying pan she saw. Sheldon was making breakfast.
Deflection number 1, Penny counted.
"Isn't your car a deterrent system all of its own? I don't know why anyone would want to steal your car," Raj pointed out. "It doesn't even have a pimpin' sound system."
"The engine is worthless," Howard contributed.
"It would suck as a get-away vehicle," Penny agreed. "Everyone knows that make and model stalls if you try to accelerate too quickly. I doubt even the parts are very sellable on the black market. Not a whole lot of people would pay money for parts they could buy at a scrapyard."
Howard offered her a high five over Raj, which she took with glee without even thinking of Howard cooties. It was a moment of personal growth.
"What I don't understand is why they didn't just take it," Leonard lamented. "After all the work they did to get into it, they just left it there. It will cost more to repair than the car is worth."
"Possibly they were put off by the malodorous scent of wet dog and sour milk emanating from the back seat from the previous owner."
Deflection number 2.
"It's not that bad," Leonard said in defence. "It's only noticeable after the car has been baking in the sun for hours, and even then only by you."
"Yeah, you only think that because you never have to sit back there," Raj answered. "That time I made you stop to throw up wasn't because I was drunk."
"It was because you were drunk," Howard pointed out.
"Ok, true, but also because the sour dog milk smell made me nauseated. You try keeping down five grasshoppers while going down Euclid while smelling something that would make vomit smell like a preferable choice."
"It still wouldn't stop someone from stealing it!" Leonard snapped.
"Then what would you suggest?" Sheldon asked. "If you have a better solution, we're waiting to hear it."
Deflection number 3.
Leonard groaned and put his head in his hands. "I don't know. I guess they could have been put off by the odour. It makes as much sense as anything."
"Does it?" Sheldon asked, his hawk-like eyes narrowing in on Leonard from where he was standing at the counter scrambling eggs. "Does it make as much sense as a meteor falling to earth and crashing through your car window?"
"Parking garage roof," Raj pointed out mournfully after a moment of excited speculation. "There'd be a hole."
Sheldon nodded his 'I grant you that, you followed my reasoning' nod. "Possibly someone believed, the North Koreans, our own government, maybe even Howard, that you had something of worth in the back seat and they were after it."
"If Leonard had anything of worth in his car, I would have just accidentally left my jacket in there and asked to borrow his keys," Howard pointed out.
"Really? And have the blame put on you immediately?" Raj asked. "Not smooth."
"I just meant there would have been easier ways for me to do it than smashing in a window," Howard retorted.
"North Koreans, then," Sheldon amended. "Or, to continue this hypothetical fallacy, Penny or I decided that a bit of vandalism was in order and took her bat to it."
Should she count that as Deflection number 4, or 4, 5, and 6? Did the truth, presented as a hyperbole, even count as deflection?
"Why?" Leonard asked, face scrunched up in confusion.
"I don't know Leonard, why do vandals do anything? If none of those suggestions seem plausible, then the simplest solution is likely the correct one."
"Don't quote Occam's Razor to me, Sheldon!"
"And what's that?" Penny asked, wondering if she should be taking notes of this conversation for later.
"Obviously, whoever was breaking into your car got interrupted and fled before they could be caught," Sheldon suggested smugly, turning to drop his eggs into the frying pan. The scent of frying bacon was permeating the room, and Penny found her stomach growl despite the doughnut she had snarfed down a few minutes ago.
"I guess so," Leonard finally admitted. "Yeah, you're right. That must have been what happened."
And that was pretty much how Sheldon manoeuvred Leonard into believing what he wanted him to believe, all the while telling the truth and yet coming out the other side without a single person suspecting guilt. It was really impressive, and really frightening to wonder how often this happened. Fact: Sheldon couldn't keep a secret. Fact: Sheldon could lie.
Fact: Sheldon was scary-brilliant and knew how to use the perceptions people had of him to his advantage.
It was while he was eating, all tidy and fastidiously taking controlled bites of his breakfast as everyone looked on in various degrees of envy, that Penny realized she was far more entranced by his mouth than she ever had a right to be.
It was unnerving to be staring at Sheldon and licking her lips, not because of the bacon but for other reasons entirely.
Unnerving, and terrifying.
She sat, utterly still in her seat as he finished breakfast and left to complete his morning decontamination, ignoring the conversation going on around her. Most of it involved the scent of bacon and Sheldon's bastardly manners of eating it in front of them. Then it turned into speculation about what today's theme would be, but Penny was more concerned with why she was so concerned with Sheldon's mouth.
By the time he returned, she was mostly convinced she'd been coveting the bacon. Leonard had probably been giving Sheldon the same expression. That was all it could be, or else she was screwed.
Sheldon stood in front of his whiteboard and Penny automatically moved over into his spot as he began to talk.
Unfortunately, Sheldon's passion for weather patterns gave Penny a lot of time to figure out whether she wanted to know what his mouth tasted like or not. She thought probably toothpaste and Listerine at the beginning of the lecture, but as time went on that would probably fade into something less chemical-tasting and more Sheldon-y.
Plus, he had a really great mouth, and she wasn't sure she had noticed that before today (she had).
And his shoulders looked sturdy enough that she could probably drape her arms over them and have room, but not so sturdy it was like draping off a boulder. They had definitely felt great beneath her forearms last night when she had...
Oh, yeah. Wanting to kiss Sheldon was definitely not a new thing.
"Penny," he said and she jumped guiltily, wondering if she had been caught gazing at him like a school-girl, but he continued on blithely. "In deference to your apocalyptic preferences, we will dedicate today to surviving a sudden onset glacial age. The movie is hokum, I hope you realize, a cheap thrill ride that even paleoclimatologists, who are the storm-chasers of the paleo contingency and one step away from pseudo-science themselves, agree that the science is deeply flawed – impossible, even."
Sheldon said that last part meaningfully, as though she should remember all his lectures on the difference between improbable and impossible and react like she understood what he was going on about. What did it say about her, really, that she kind of did get it? She wasn't sure if it was too much time in Casa de Cooper or if, weirdly and impossibly even, he was making an effort to make sure she understood him. "I thought the point of global warming was an ice age could occur."
"There would be more warning," Raj explained. "Spread out over a longer span of time. The effects are gradual, and there is a lot of misunderstood fear surrounding the idea of an ice age. Really, it's just an inevitable by-product of living on a planet in orbit around a star and scientists have been arguing for decades, centuries even, over whether we are currently in an ice age or not. The polar caps would indicate we are. It's one of the reasons global warming is considered a myth in some circles."
Penny took a moment to register this. "Ok, so if The Day After Tomorrow is so false, why are we wasting a day on it?"
"Educating one's mind is never a waste," was all Sheldon had to say.
"Why did we do zombies? Or Aliens?" Howard asked. "It's fun."
There were some things Penny could see Sheldon doing against all odds. Basing entire Apocalypse Week days on a concept of fun was far beyond the odds, so far beyond them that even Penny noticed the discrepancy and she was the one the most likely to allow Sheldon's behaviour any leeway. Sheldon might, reluctantly and possibly unintentionally (but even that was under question in Penny's mind) allow the activities to be approachable and fun, so that they were more likely to participate and learn, but Sheldon would never, ever, ever, ever base one of the seven days out of three-hundred and fifty-two (and one quarter) that he was allowed to hammer important survival skills into their heads on something fun.
He didn't argue with Howard's assessment, but when she shot him a suspicious glance he turned away from her and turned the apartment's air conditioning up to full blast.
"The object of today is surviving extreme cold," Sheldon explained. "The conditions are a bit difficult to replicate in Southern California during this season, so I ask all of you remain in this apartment, do not open any of the doors or windows to allow the cold air to escape, and do not put additional layers of clothing on. As in any situation, you are left with what you were wearing at the time."
Penny barely even registered this as the boys groaned at the beachwear Sheldon had prompted them to don for today's theme. Penny herself, in deference to Howard's presence, had worn more than a bikini and thin cover-up as was her usual costume for hot-weather activities. Not much more, but a solid t-shirt and a pair of capris covered a heck of a lot more skin than cut-offs so short the pockets were hanging out (along with other things that seemed fine while at the beach but did not translate well to bending over in front of Howard, Raj, Leonard or even Sheldon – the later being more a case of acute embarrassment since it wasn't like he would notice, and really, they had cut-offs in Texas. He probably owned a pair of the male version himself, or did when he was thirteen and...).
She'd been thinking of something important, Penny remembered, eying Sheldon with a distinct "I'm on to you" expression.
It had been a while since she made a note in her handy notebook, but she scribbled a line on the page opposite notes about alien incursions.
Note to Self: Find out why Sheldon's up to.
Yeah, ok, so it didn't make sense grammatically, but it made sense to her, and as an added bonus if any of them read it, they wouldn't have a clue.
"Hypothermia is..." Sheldon started and Penny tuned him out. When she had made full-time employee (and what a joy that was to her pretence of living out her dreams) at the Cheesecake Factory, she'd been forced to take First Aid Certification. Sheldon had a photocopy of the certificate tacked to the inside of one of the kitchen cupboards, right up beside emergency numbers, poison control information, a list of hazard symbols that were a lot more complex than the skull and crossbones that screamed POISON to anyone with a lick of common sense or at least an interest in pirates, and the most compact first aid kit she'd ever seen. He'd taken her through all thirteen first aid kits in the apartment, not including the ones surely in his emergency preparedness kits and the third bedroom she hadn't even known about. He probably had hundreds.
Regardless, her point was that she had learned all about hypothermia then, and it hadn't been new information at the time. She grew up in Nebraska. She knew the signs of frostbite because she once came close to losing a toe after wearing beat-up sneakers to the movies mid-January and having a loud screaming match with her then-boyfriend, leaving her foolish stubborn self to walk home. She knew the signs of hypothermia because Tommy, even more foolish and stubborn than she was, had once fallen through the ice while taking a short-cut on his skidoo while on a trip to visit family in Minnesota. She'd remembered everything she'd learned both times, experience being a far better teaching tool than a book, as far as she was concerned.
She was still reflecting on Sheldon's motivations when there was silence and everyone was staring at her.
"If they stop shivering, that's not a good sign," she said automatically, mind not entirely on the subject. "Shivering means the body is trying to keep warm. If they stop then their body is trying to conserve what little energy it has left and is in the process of shutting down."
She must have said something right, because Sheldon continued on with his lecture, leaving Penny alone in her mind to consider why he was teaching them to fend off zombies or survive ice ages when the science said they were more or less improbable and there were so many other threats on their doorstep that Sheldon could be focusing on. Zombies she could understand, because hey, what better way to kick off a week of apocalyptic lessons than with some zombie hunting? Aliens too; these men were scientists and science fiction fanatics, aliens seemed as inevitable to them as someone getting trampled to death during Black Friday sales were in her world.
"Dibs on Penny!" Howard yelled enthusiastically, then, when Raj looked crestfallen, he patted his knee. "Sorry buddy, a pretty lady takes priority over partnership pacts any day."
"You are getting nowhere near this pretty lady," Penny retorted, wondering if she even wanted to know. Yeah, she should probably start paying attention now if she was going to potentially miss being paired up with Howard. "Even if you were the last man on earth, I would rather die a cold and painful death than be within two miles of you when you're trying to 'heat it up.'"
She found herself alone with Sheldon after finishing all seven of his fire-starting workstations on her first try. The boys all called for a do-over, so she finished all seven on her second try too. "I've figured you out," she informed him.
"I sincerely doubt it," he responded dismissively.
"You're not teaching us skills to survive an apocalypse. That's just a diversion, and hey, on the offchance that zombies invade or whatever, then yeah they'll be more prepared than they would have been otherwise. What you're doing is teaching them how to survive smaller scale disasters, like getting lost in the wilderness or, like, surviving a police state or whatever. Things that could happen without the world ending, and they don't even notice because they hear the word apocalypse and that's all they think of."
"My cerebral cortex doesn't function on such simplistic levels," he sneered, walking away.
That would and should have been the end of that, if she didn't notice him watching her more acutely afterwards, that mulish expression on his face that he got when a particularly difficult problem was giving him trouble.
Penny kind of enjoyed being the unsolvable equation in his life.
x.x.x.x.
It was getting cold in the apartment, and Penny couldn't help but run her hands up and down her arms for warmth. She was huddled up against Leonard, who was trying to both disguise his unmistaken glee and avail himself to all the heat he could leech, which meant he was, in turn, huddled up against Raj and Howard. They were all standing in a group, shuffling awkwardly away from each other whenever Sheldon took too much notice and reminded them in a survival situation they might not have a buddy handy.
Howard didn't even make a joke. The boy was so obviously California homegrown. This temperature was his version of a polar cap. Penny was more used to it, but there was a strong difference between the chill of a Nebraskan winter day (or night) when you knew you were in for negative temperatures, and waking up in SoCal only to find the air chilled artificially. And it was still humid air, only chilled humid air, so it was even worse.
At first, Sheldon dedicating a day to her preferences made that little school girl in her sit up and shout with delight that he was noticing her, but that part of Penny quieted down the further into the day they went and the colder it got. Part of her mind thought freezing due to air conditioning was a joke, but the way goosebumps were raised on her arms and how cold her nose was growing wasn't really a laughing matter.
It didn't really help that all Sheldon was teaching was basic outdoor survival instincts. How to build a fire. How to find shelter, or build shelter. How to read a compass. How to read moss on a tree (excuse me, Sheldon, how do you expect us to locate moss on a tree trunk if it just snowed eight feet?) how to keep warm when you were on your own (the moment afterwards, all three boys stuck their hands under their armpits, Penny refrained but only through sheer obstinacy) and how to keep warm in a group. The lack of activity didn't help matters, not even when Sheldon showed them simple exercises they could do to make sure their toes didn't fall off.
And Penny was seriously worrying that Raj's might. The poor dear was shivering. Howard kept nudging closer to him in solidarity, only to be knocked out of the way by a wayward shoulder tremor.
Parts of the day were pretty cool, like when Sheldon honoured Howard's dibs and forced the two of them together to design a heating system based solely on things found in the apartment. Penny sometimes thought Sheldon was a little sadistic and had a weird sense of humour, making Howard do an intellectual activity with her after he had claimed a partnership based on her curves and making her work with Howard, who was above all a skeezeball at the best of times. After a few moments of Howard trying to saddle close to her and Penny sidestepping out of the way, Howard had said "I'm thinking the heating elements from the stove" and Penny had retorted "I'm thinking burning all the wood in the apartment."
That created an impasse. "It doesn't count as creating something if you just steal the idea from the movie."
"Are you kidding me?" Penny asked. "They burned books. We can do that too, but they missed out on a wealth of burnable material, like the shelves themselves. Did you know that most furniture is made out of wood? Dressers, tables, desks, the inside of the couch, the boxspring of a bed. The kitchen cupboards are entirely wood."
"A homemade space heater wouldn't emit smoke," Howard retorted.
"Or at least it shouldn't, if you made it right."
"I'd make it right!" Howard retorted hotly. "I'm an engineer. I graduated from MIT. I work for the space program. The space program. Do you know how difficult it is to get into that? I damn well know how to make a heater! What do you know?"
"Fire."
"Pyromaniac tendencies aside, what about if you didn't survive that far? What if you were the one eaten by a wolf? Then what would we do?"
Penny snorted. "Do I look like little red's grandma? No wolf would eat me, I'd be bringing it back for supper, which we could only cook on a fire." Howard didn't seem to have a retort to that, so she continued. "And where would it get electricity?" she asked. "We went over this yesterday. You up to making a... what did you call it?"
"We have generators," he pointed out, completely sidestepping the question. "Or Sheldon does."
"And one of us is supposed to crank it at all hours or else freeze to death? What happens when it gets cold and we get lethargic, or what about that moment at the end of the movie where the super freeze is edging in and they're throwing books into the fire, would any of us be able to crank that hard?"
He leered. "I bet you could."
"I bet you have more experience cranking it than I do!" she retorted.
"And I bet you have more experience kindling wood than I do." He wagged his eyebrows but on one of the up-down motions he paused, eyebrows kept laughably raised and a surprised expression captured on his face. "Hybrid?"
"Hybrid," Penny agreed.
Howard did all the heavy lifting metaphorically, and she did all of it physically, and before they knew it, the blueprints were done up, the proof that it was created completely of things in the apartment were stacked in front of them, and she and Howard were high fiving and jumping around like children (and taunting Leonard and Raj for failing to consider a proper ventilation system for theirs). In response, Sheldon put an A (without the plus, but Penny expected no less from Sheldon) on their blueprint and a C- on Leonard's and Raj's, and gave them a ghost of a pleased expression. Howard and Penny cheered again, but then Howard creepily went to hug her chest, so Penny ended up punching him in the diaphragm, which consequently had him bent over the couch wheezing for an inhaler for 15 minutes, and yeah, she felt kind of bad for that, but he shouldn't have thought winning was a good excuse to motorboat her, so there.
Parts of the day sucked, like the fact it was so frigging cold.
However, she was able to suffer through the day until Sheldon ordered them to pull Leonard's mattress out of his room. Penny assumed it was for some kind of trust-building exercise, or for an awesome fort, but again her assumptions were wrong.
"Key to survival in extreme cold is sharing body heat," he reminded them. "Fortunately, I have prepared so such an occasion by purchasing a battery-operated blanket. Those of you without will have to do it the old fashioned way."
"Sex!" Howard exclaimed with glee.
Penny shot Sheldon a panicked looked.
"No sex," Sheldon said in a tone that brooked no arguments. "Keep this rated strictly G. If I hear that any of you behave inappropriately, there will be severe consequences."
Then he retired into his own bedroom and left the four of them staring at each other awkwardly. Penny considered leaving, but she was doing so well with impressing Sheldon with her ability to survive all his scenarios that she didn't want to let him (and herself) down now. She couldn't even say why it was so important to her, more important than avoiding the awkwardness of this, but she knew that if she left without trying, it would be something she regretted.
x.x.x.x.x.
There were four in the bed and the little one said "get your damn foot out of my face."
"My foot isn't in your face."
"It better be your foot!"
"I think it's my foot. See?"
"My nose!" Howard yelped. "Move over and stop kicking!"
"Personal space, Leonard!" Penny snapped as too much of him was suddenly right up against too much of her.
"Someone trade spaces with me," Leonard growled. "This isn't working."
So they all shuffled around. Time passed.
"Raj, get your hand off my butt."
"Oh sorry."
"RAJ!"
"It's not my hand."
"Sorry, it might be my foot again," Leonard replied groggily.
"You're an octopus sleeper!" Howard accused him. "Keep your flailing tentacles away from me."
"I can't get to sleep," Raj whined.
"Count catwomen," Howard suggested.
"Do you really want him thinking of all that spandex?" Leonard asked. "Count constellations."
"Booooring!" Raj pointed out.
More time passed.
"AHHHCK!" Penny shrieked as something pressed up against her back. She pushed blindly with her elbows.
"EEEEiiiii!" Leonard yelped, jarred from sleep by tumbling off the mattress on the other side of the bed.
"That's it!" Penny said hotly, crawling out of bed and snapping the blanket behind her. "You guys enjoy your sausage fest. I'm going to go give Sheldon grief and then I'm going home."
"Nooo! Penny come back! Without you it's just weird."
"Penny, that's not a good idea," Leonard said from the floor. "You can't go in Sheldon's room."
Raj snored.
x.x.x.x.
"Sheldon," Penny hissed, fingers curled around his arm as she lightly shook him. "Wake up."
"Danger! Danger!" he exclaimed, bolting up in bed. Penny had considered placing her hand over his mouth to stop him from yelling himself awake, but something naggled away at her stomach at the idea that he had developed such a reaction as a self-preservation tactic. She knew he spent time in boarding school, and her mind kept wondering what had happened to him that the only way he knew to cope was to wake up screaming danger.
Penny didn't consider herself a genius, but she did know a bit about feeling helpless, and she would never be the one who robbed him of a safety mechanism deliberately.
"It's just me," she told him, curling her fingers against the urge to put her hand on his shoulder reassuringly. Sheldon did not take such contact as comfort. So many of his little idiosyncrasies added up to a larger picture that made her stomach clench uselessly with a need to travel back into his past to confront his demons.
"You can't be in my room Penny," he informed her. "I thought we cleared this up last night."
"I know sweetie," she told him. "I just wanted to tell you in person that you're going to have to put me down as dead for this one."
"You're dead?" he asked, grabbing his notebook from the nightstand. "Of what?"
"I'm not dead yet," she said with a smile. "I'm willingly eliminating myself from this competition. Maybe if it was real life I could hold on for a bit longer, but I can't willingly allow the boys to keep groping me. I'm just going to go sleep in my own bed."
"But you're winning," he told her, showing her a list of stats that she didn't even bother trying to read, especially in the low light coming from his night light and glow fish.
"No, you don't understand. While you're here comfortable under your electric blanket, I've spent the last four hours in bed with three men I'm not in a physical relationship with."
"Are they snoring?"
Penny snorted. "Ok, let me break it down for you. All three of them find me attractive. You know that. When men find women hot their bodies tend to react to being in close proximity to said woman. I would rather die than have another boner pressed against me tonight, let alone all the times one of them tried to cop a feel."
Sheldon was frowning at her. "I told them to keep this rated G."
"What more do you expect from Howard? I had to leave when he tried to dry hump me."
Sheldon ran this through his Sheldon-colloquial dictionary and then recoiled in disgust.
"So unless you're going to let me sleep in your bed and you go snuggle up with your horn-dog friends, then I'm going to bow out of this competition, ok?"
"No, it's not ok. You shouldn't be the one who has to die because Howard can't keep his hands to himself. Howard should be the one who dies."
Penny sighed. "By that rationale there would still be only one in the bed, and that would be me." When he didn't respond, she elaborated. "All of them would be dead."
Sheldon echoed her sigh. "I guess there is only one recourse left."
"Yeah," Penny said regrettably. She'd have to die. She had wanted to survive every single one of his scenarios; that would have been awesome. Her eyes almost bugged out of her head when Sheldon shifted over. "Sheldon?" she squeaked.
"Unlike my comrades, I take Apocalypse Week very seriously. Up until this year I have always been let down by the survival skills of those around me to the point where I would not put myself in danger to ensure their survival because they could not return the favour. You have proved yourself to be worthy of my consideration."
Penny crawled into bed beside him, making sure not to touch him. The weight of what he was doing pressed on her mind. "Are you saying that because you know I would take care of you the best I could if anything ever happened that you're willing to do the same for me?"
"No," he said firmly. "Leonard, Howard, and Raj would also probably try the best they could, as you put it, but their best isn't good enough."
Penny giggled, unfurling her body down his warm sheets. She hadn't realized how cold she was until she was underneath his electric blanket. "Mmmm," she hummed. "This is really toasty. Maybe I should buy one of these things."
"It is a sound investment."
"Sheldon?" Penny asked, not surprised when he didn't answer her. He probably thought it was useless for her to add the question mark after his name considering they were already engaged in conversation. "Thank you for saving me," she told him sleepily, the warmth of his bed dragging her under. If he said anything in return, she didn't hear it.
When Penny woke up in the morning, she was pressed up against his side, her leg thrown over his. She felt sickened by the idea that she had done to him what the boys had done to her in Leonard's room by violating his personal space. Then she noticed that the fingers of one hand were tangled with his, held against his chest. Suddenly, her heart was racing despite, or probably because of, the innocent gesture. She'd slept with enough guys to know that during the night she had probably placed her hand on his chest, and he probably deliberately laced his hand with hers.
Sheldon Cooper might be an enigma, but he definitely wasn't as much of a robot as his friends thought.
Penny realized for the first time what this week meant. All bets were off, none of the norms applied, and Sheldon Cooper was starting to appreciate Penny on a level he usually reserved for fellow scientists and comic book aficionados.
Maybe the equation wasn't so unsolvable after all.
x.x.x.x.x.x.
A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter, I really do appreciate every single one of you. I try my best to answer back, especially in the first few days after posting (after that, despite my best intentions, I don't respond as often as I should). I waffled a bit about posting the feel-good, saccharine ending to this chapter, feeling like it was too soon in the story for this, but surprisingly 1. It's too cute to cut, and 2. There are only two (three if I can scrounge up enough for an interval chapter) chapters left to the story, so sadly it's kind of not too soon. I know, I'm giving both sad face and surprise face too.
For those of you following me on Twitter (EternalCon is my screen name, link is in my profile if you're interested) you know that I went to the states for the first time yesterday. What was the only thing I bought? Red Vines. I've been updating frequently from quotes from my NaNoWriMo fanfics – I'm working on that Sheldon and Missy as roommates one and the Time Travel story I joked about last chapter, but turned out to be one of those ideas I couldn't shake.
Secret: the last part of this chapter was written during NaNo 2010 and was one of the first scenes I put to paper after I finished Prank Wars (but before starting Caper Continuum). Additional secret: I'm kind of digging this Penny/Howard friendship.