Disclaimer: I do not own The Big Bang Theory or any of its characters. If I did Sheldon/Penny would be so on. I do however take responsibility for any and all science errors.
AN: Spoilers up through all of season 3. Events from season 4 may work their way in as well so if you aren't up to date then you may be spoiled.
AN: I was rewatching most of the series on DVD this last weekend with the wonderful shadynaiad and realized that I had a canon error in the last chapter. According to The Panty Piñata Polarization, Sheldon does his laundry at 8:15 not 8:30 on Saturday night. It has been changed in the last chapter and will be the correct time in this one. Sheldon would not approve of me messing with his schedule when I didn't have to.
The Emotional Attachment Determination
Chapter 3 - The Detergent Deficiency
"I still can't believe Penny killed me twenty times." Leonard whined.
Sheldon closed his eyes in frustration. He was sitting at his desk attempting to get some work done but Leonard persisted in trying to engage him in conversation. "What is it that you are unable to believe? That she was able to shoot you twenty times or that she was willing to do so?"
"Both!" Leonard exclaimed.
"Well, as to the former concern, Penny is an excellent shot. She and I both had fathers who believed that wilderness skills were very important and coerced us into learning them. I daresay it is one of the very few things that Penny and I have in common." Sheldon explained to Leonard. "Now as for your second concern, I am unable to speak to Penny's motivations for shooting you. You would have to ask her."
Sheldon turned back to his computer hoping that the pointless conversation was over. Unfortunately it seemed as though Leonard had other ideas.
"It's not really very fair." He complained. "I'm the one who asked her if she wanted to come and paid for her to play so why did she spend the whole afternoon with you? Killing me?"
"I believe the colloquial response would be 'life isn't fair.'" Sheldon said. "What were you expecting Leonard?"
"I don't know." He sighed. "Penny just seemed strange is all. What happened with Leslie? She said Penny threatened her."
Sheldon's face darkened. He looked closely at Leonard. "Leslie is evil. She brought up the rather unfortunate events that took place in the Arctic. Penny took offense but no actual threat was ever issued."
"Oh." Leonard said fidgeting a bit.
Sheldon narrowed his eyes. "Leslie knew details that were not included in my retraction email. You wouldn't know anything about that would you?"
"No of course not." Leonard answered quickly, his eyes darting down and to the left.
Sheldon felt a twisting in his gut at Leonard's obvious lie. He had been hoping that Howard had been the one to tell Leslie about the prank. He turned back to his computer screen and tried to focus on the numbers in front of him. Sheldon couldn't let there be any doubts about the project he was working on with Raj so he had made it a habit to check and recheck all of the data that Raj collected. He didn't think that Raj would risk deportation with another prank but he didn't trust anyone anymore.
"I just don't think its right that Penny had me pay." Leonard said after several minutes of silence.
It was all starting to be too much for Sheldon. First there were the changes to his schedule, then there was the confrontation with Leslie, and now there was Leonard. Fighting the urge to grind his teeth, Sheldon stood up and got out his wallet. He took out a twenty dollar bill and held it out to Leonard. "Here. She spent the afternoon helping me win so I'll pay for her. Now can I work? Or do you feel the need to continue this conversation?"
Leonard looked up at Sheldon in surprise. "I don't need your money. I didn't really mind paying."
Sheldon forced out a laugh. "I assume that was supposed to be a joke."
Leonard huffed in annoyance but reached out and took the twenty dollar bill. Sheldon returned to his desk and once again entered the safe and ordered world of mathematics. Thankfully Leonard left him alone for the rest of the afternoon.
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Penny sat on the table in the laundry room flipping through the document in her lap. Despite her natural tendency towards being fashionably late she had headed down to the laundry room at 7:40 and was keeping herself entertained by rereading the contract. This time she was actually reading the sections that she had skipped the first time.
The kinds of things that Sheldon felt necessary to include in a friendship pact were truly astounding. For example, there were several pages dedicated to outlining the procedures for a post-apocalyptic survival situation. It was completely crazy, but she found it surprisingly heartwarming that he had included a clause that would allow her to use items in his survival kit if hers was unreachable. Of course, Penny figured it would be best not to tell him that she didn't have a survival kit at all.
She was nearly done with the section on post-apocalyptic survival when she heard footsteps on the stairs. Penny checked her watch and sure enough it was exactly 8:15. She set the papers next to her on the table and turned to the door.
"Hello, Penny." Sheldon said as he entered the laundry room carrying his basket. He glanced at the stack of papers next to her but didn't say anything as he made a beeline for the washers.
"Sheldon," Penny acknowledged with a smile. She stayed quiet while he intently separated his clothes into three washers. She knew that he would be unable to concentrate on a conversation until he had finished. On any other day she might have tried to distract him just to get a rise out of him but today she wanted him to be in a good mood.
"Oh no," Sheldon said a few moments later. He was staring in dismay between the bottle of detergent in his hand and the washer full of whites in front of him.
"What?" Penny asked.
"It appears that I do not have enough detergent to do all three loads." Sheldon said the strain evident in his voice.
Penny reached into the laundry basket next to her and grabbed her detergent. "Here you can borrow some of mine."
"How can I possibly borrow detergent? How would I return it?" Sheldon asked staring at the bottle in her hand like it might bite him. "And besides that isn't the kind I use."
Penny rolled her eyes and chose to ignore his literal interpretation of the word borrow. "It's just soap Sheldon. They're all pretty much the same."
"I beg to differ-"
"I'm sure you do." Penny interrupted before she had to listen to a rant about the chemistry of fabric softening. "But you have two options. Either use this detergent or go without your underwear this week."
"There is a third option. You could take me to the store to get more detergent." Sheldon suggested.
Penny shook her head. "Not gonna happen. You can go with me later in the week."
"Very well," Sheldon glared at her but took the proffered detergent. Once he had successfully started the three washers he turned back to look at her. "I see you have been looking over the contract."
"I read it like I promised but I can't sign it." Penny said watching him closely. Even so she almost missed the brief look of distress that crossed his face before being replaced by his usual haughty confidence.
"I believe I have made it clear that we can negotiate the terms." Sheldon stated. "Unless your objection is with the entire premise."
This time Penny didn't have any trouble seeing the vulnerable look in Sheldon's eyes. No matter how hard he tried to reject the feelings that made him human Penny knew he still felt most of them. He might not always understand them but he felt them and right now she was pretty certain that he was feeling rejected.
"I don't have any objection to the intent." Penny said trying to choose her words carefully. "It's the method I reject."
"I don't believe I follow."
"Friendships aren't something you can make rules for." Penny explained.
"Of course they are." Sheldon said. "I have observed any number of rules. For example, you yourself told me that friends must maintain confidences."
Penny sighed. "Yes there are things that you should do in order to be a good friend but you can't just make a business agreement out of it."
"I don't see why not." Sheldon said frustration evident.
"Do you trust me?" Penny asked deciding to try a different tactic.
Sheldon stared at her for a long time. Long enough that Penny became concerned that she was misreading everything.
"Yes." He said quietly.
Penny let out a breath that she hadn't realized she was holding. She gestured at the stack of papers. "Then you have to trust me to be your friend without all these rules."
Sheldon looked at her doubtfully.
"Friendship is about trust, Sheldon." Penny said. "I trust you."
"Of course you do. I'm very trustworthy." Sheldon said his arrogance creeping back into his voice.
"And so humble," Penny laughed. "I'm serious though. I trust you to be there when I need you and not to hurt me on purpose. Can you trust me to do the same without a contract?"
"It appears that you're not going to give me a choice." Sheldon said.
"I'm not." Penny told him.
"Then, yes." He said sourly after a long pause.
Penny smiled brightly. "If it makes you feel any better, I promise that if I ever develop super strength I'll let you be my trusty side kick."
"It doesn't." Sheldon said before asking, "Super strength?"
Penny exaggeratedly cracked her knuckles. "Let other people have invisibility or flight. I'll take super-human strength over those any day."
"I'm not surprised that you would choose something so primitive and violent." Sheldon said condescendingly. "I would choose telekinetic powers."
"Telekinetic," Penny said remembering a past conversation she had had with Sheldon. "Is that the one where you can move things with your mind?"
"That is correct."
"And what would you do with it? Make someone's brain explode?" Penny asked smugly. "That would be very nonviolent and evolved of you."
Sheldon raised his fingers to his temples and squinted intently at her.
Penny returned the gesture before dropping her hands and laughing. "You have to face the facts Dr. Cooper. You aren't nearly as evolved as you'd like to think. You're still down here with the rest of us lowly humans."
"Strange that you're the only person who thinks so." Sheldon commented.
Penny shrugged. "I've always been very insightful."
Sheldon gave her a look filled with doubt before moving over to the washers. As soon as he stopped in front of it the first washer buzzed. Penny shook her head, only Sheldon could keep track of the time that precisely.
Looking at her watch, Penny hopped off the table to check her own clothes. There were still a few minutes left in the dryer cycle but she opened them anyway to see if the clothes were dry. Deciding that they were close enough she dumped her things into her basket, crumpling everything up so that it would fit without spilling over the top.
"Aren't you going to fold them?" Sheldon asked in horror as she turned to leave.
"I'll do it upstairs." Penny answered. "There's a movie coming on in a few minutes that I want to see."
"Oh, Penny," Sheldon said shaking his head. "It's not another one of those melodramatic movies where an abused or jilted woman plots elaborate revenge against all men is it?"
"No," Penny said defensively. She couldn't help it if she loved Lifetime movies. "This one is about a pregnant woman with an eating disorder."
"Why would anyone want to watch that?" Sheldon asked.
"I don't know. Because it makes us feel better about our own lives?" Penny suggested.
"The one you watched at our apartment when you couldn't pay your cable bill didn't make me feel better about my life. It just made me feel irritated."
Penny frowned at the mention of her money problems but pushed her annoyance aside. "That's because you aren't the target audience, Sweetie."
"Obviously." Sheldon said turning his attention back to his clothes. "Goodnight, Penny."
"Goodnight, Sheldon." Penny said shaking her head.
As she made her way up the stairs, Penny decided that all in all things had gone better than expected.
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Sheldon carefully arranged a t-shirt on his Flipfold. His mind was once again occupied with the Penny Problem. He had been so sure that a contract would be the best way to alleviate his discomfort about their new relationship paradigm but apparently he was going to have to navigate his friendship with Penny without formal rules and procedures to guide him.
The uncertainty was almost enough to make him abandon the entire endeavor and return to the status quo. Leonard would continue to be his best friend and nothing would have to change. Unfortunately, things had already progressed too far to turn back. The point of no return had occurred tonight when he professed his trust in Penny. Sheldon had realized that he did trust her. He trusted her more than anyone. In fact she might be the only person he did trust. He trusted her to always open the door when he knocked and to never run away when he got sick. But most importantly, he trusted her to never betray him.
But what was causing him the most discomfort was the fact that Penny had also professed her trust in him. It wasn't an entirely comfortable feeling. There was a sense of obligation to her trust that was worse than when she gave him gifts for Christmas or his birthday. Suddenly he was somehow responsible for her in a way that he wasn't sure he would ever be ready for. What if he didn't provide an equivalent level of trustworthiness? What if he somehow breached her trust?
Things would be so much easier if he could quantify his relationship with Penny mathematically. Unfortunately, he was fairly certain that his current problems were beyond the rather considerable insights of Stu the Cockatoo and any algorithms that he could hope to derive. In fact, he was starting to suspect that he would win a Nobel Prize for confirming String Theory long before he mastered the nuances of friendship. It did not escape his notice that four years ago he wouldn't have cared about mastering any human relationship. Actually, four years ago he thought he had already mastered friendship and had no need for anything beyond his rather rigidly defined social interactions with Leonard, Howard, and Raj.
Now here he was four years later submitting to a relationship paradigm predicated on feelings and instinct, neither of which had ever held a prominent place in his life. Things would be so much simpler if he could go back in time and prevent Leonard from ever bringing Penny into their lives. Sheldon knew that he couldn't extricate her from his life now. It would cause him much more discomfort to be without her friendship than the current confusion was causing but it would be different if he could expunge her presence from his life entirely. Unfortunately, if he went back in time and prevented Leonard from befriending Penny then his entire purpose for going back in time would be removed and a paradox would ensue.
Sheldon straightened the stack of neatly folded t-shirts and placed them carefully in his laundry basket. As he walked up the stairs he came to the rather disconcerting conclusion that he was going to be eating from the high fiber end of the cereal shelf for a long time to come.