WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN: A REBOOT HOMAGE
Disclaimer: The author does not own THE BIG BANG THEORY or any of the characters. Much of the dialogue in this story is adapted directly from the 2007 pilot episode script by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady. The characters of Frank and Harry are owned by son-goku5.
- 3 -
"Leonard," said the lanky guy, "this is hardly the area of my expertise, but I'm not sure staring at a woman silently is an appropriate form of introduction. I believe you're supposed to say 'Hello,' or 'Welcome to the building,' or other such meaningless social nicety?" When this failed to break through the shock on Leonard's face, or on Penny's, the lanky guy sighed, moved forward to her doorway, arranged his features into something resembling a smile—though to Penny it looked more like somebody restraining a bad case of gas—and nodded to her. "Good afternoon. Welcome to the building."
Penny stared at him, still trying to take it in. This was Leonard's building? Leonard lived here? Out of all the apartments for rent in the entire city of Pasadena, she had picked by sheer unimaginable fluke the one next to his? The one where Leonard lived with his—Ah, right. She smiled and stepped forward, putting her hand out. "Thank you. You must be—"
She'd been about to say Sheldon, but stopped. Behind the lanky guy's shoulder, Leonard's eyebrows had shot up and he was shaking his head fiercely. The lessons of a year's worth of improv classes kicked in—never block your partner—and before she quite realized it Penny had changed the sentence with only the barest of pauses. "—my new neighbours. Hi. I'm Penny."
"Dr. Sheldon Cooper, at your service," said the lanky guy, bowing slightly as he shook her hand. "For the record, I should clarify that 'at your service' is another one of those social niceties; please be aware that I in no way consider myself indentured to you beyond the immediate demands of protocol."
Penny blinked. "Huh?"
"Don't take that personally, that's just Sheldon's way of trying to pre-emptively get out of doing people favours," interrupted Leonard, shouldering his way past Sheldon. He shifted the takeout bag he held to his left hand and offered her his right with an apologetic grin. "Hi. I'm Leonard. Uh, Leonard Hofstadter."
That was it! "Hofstadter!" she burst out, slapping her forehead and making both guys jump. "I knew I—" She caught herself again at Leonard's panicky look and Sheldon's confused one. "—thought you looked like a Hofstadter," she finished lamely. "The name just . . . fits, you know?"
Sheldon frowned. "No, I don't know. Insofar as anyone could reasonably guess Leonard's name from his physical appearance a Mediterranean name seems far likelier; to look like a typically Dutch Hofstadter, he'd have to be much blonder. Though probably not significantly taller," he added, and Leonard glanced skyward in exasperation. "You should refrain from such baseless assumptions about people in future, Penny. They're not likely to be nearly so accurate."
All of a sudden, Leonard being in the bar last night made a lot more sense. Penny managed a smile. "I'll keep that in mind, Sheldon. Thank you for the welcome, Leonard," she said, taking his hand. "Maybe we can have coffee sometime." Unseen by Sheldon, she caressed the back of his hand with her thumb, holding his eyes with her own.
Leonard went brick red. "Sure," he agreed, his voice cracking. "Yes. Coffee would be great. Uh, we'll talk to you soon." The look in his eyes, though, was as far from the supposedly casual words as could be imagined. Penny found herself flushing a little as well, in both her face and other areas farther south. She let him go, and he nodded, clearing his throat. "So, uh, goodbye. Sheldon, say goodbye."
"Goodbye," said Sheldon.
"Goodbye," said Leonard.
"Goodbye," said Penny.
"Goodbye," said Leonard again.
"Goodbye?" said Sheldon, looking bemused.
"Goodbye," repeated Leonard, panic visible in his eyes again.
Okay, the record was definitely skipping now. Penny decided to nudge it. "Goodbye," she said firmly, and shut the door. Dazed, she went to one of her boxes and sat down on it, wondering what to do next.
Among the many other quirks Penny remembered Leonard describing to her last night, Sheldon had apparently never learned the knack of tactfully lowering his voice either; it carried clearly through her door from the hallway outside. "You were never that friendly with the old neighbor, Leonard."
"Well, Penny's a significant improvement, isn't she?" That made her smile.
"Over a two-hundred-pound transvestite with a skin condition? Normally I'd agree, but Louis-slash-Louise seemed like a much more sensible person. And you were never distracted long enough to let our curry get cold, either," Sheldon said, his voice fading out near the end. A door closed.
Penny blew out a breath and massaged her face. For half a second she'd been annoyed that Leonard didn't want to admit to what they'd shared last night, but that decision was a lot more understandable now. Besides, it was kind of fun to have a secret. Unbidden, her lips curved up in a smile. And what a secret. If last night had been any example of what one-night stands with Leonard were normally like, being his neighbor offered a lot more potential for entertainment than her last residence did.
As if the thought had summoned him, a quick, furtive-sounding knock came at her door. Penny jumped up and hurried to answer it, a little surprised at herself, but she didn't have time to think about it before flinging the door open to reveal an apologetic-looking Leonard. Before he could say anything she hit him, hard, on the shoulder. "You idiot!" she snapped, just barely remembering to keep her voice down. "Why didn't you put your number in my phone?!" She hit him again, as he cringed back.
"Penny, I'm really sorry, I—what?" He blinked.
"You forgot—to put your number—in my phone," she told him, biting the words off. "Do you have any idea what it was like waking up today and realizing I didn't know how to find you again? Or that I didn't even really know who you were?!"
"Wow." Leonard looked bemused. "That, that isn't at all what I expected you were going to be mad about."
"Oh, you mean going all cloak-and-dagger about last night? No, once I actually met your roommate that made a lot more sense. But don't change the subject." Penny folded her arms. "Did you just want to get rid of me? Was that it?"
"What?! No!" Leonard's jaw dropped. "How could you ever think that? I didn't put my number in your phone because I didn't have your passcode—and I didn't know how you'd react if I asked you for it. You didn't know me. And lots of people keep confidential information on their phone."
"Oh." Penny blinked. "Yeah, I guess that's true. Still, you could have written it on the note!"
"Well, I . . . I didn't want to pressure you by looking like I expected you to call. You knew my name, and I told you I worked at CalTech; I figured if you really wanted to find me that'd be enough—wasn't it?"
This brought Penny up short again. "Yes, you did, but . . . ." Finally, she gave a sheepish sigh. "I couldn't remember your last name. I'm sorry!" she added at his flabbergasted look. "Okay? I only heard it once, and it's not that easy a name to remember when you're drunk. Besides—" she broke into a mischievous grin and leaned in close "—that wasn't what I was yelling at the top of my lungs for most of last night."
Leonard turned brick red again, but a tiny smile seemed to force its way out. "No, no it wasn't, was it?"
She hit him again, though much more lightly. "Hey. Get that smug look off your face, Dr. Hofstadter." She glanced over his shoulder as his apartment door opened. "Oh, crap. Sheldon's coming."
"Thanks. Um—" Leonard raised his voice to a distinctly artificial volume. "So, Penny, I'm aware moving can be stressful, and, uh, well, we just got Indian takeout," he gestured back at their door, "and I find that when I'm undergoing stress, good food and company has a tremendously comforting effect. Plus, curry is a natural laxative, and I don't have to tell you about the importance of . . . a clean colon?" He tried a smile. Penny just barely refrained from hitting herself in the forehead.
"Leonard, again, this is one of my few areas of non-expertise, but I believe that you might want to skip references to bowel movements in the context of a luncheon invitation," said Sheldon, who had arrived at Penny's door in time to hear the last words.
Penny decided to forestall further weirdness by cutting to the chase. "You're inviting me over to eat? That's so nice, I'd love to." She closed her door, following Leonard and Sheldon across the hall to theirs. "So what do you guys do for fun around here?"
"Well, today we tried masturbating for money," said Sheldon, without any hint of embarrassment or affect whatsoever. Leonard cringed into himself as if struck. Penny found herself clamping her lips together to avoid bursting into laughter. Yep, she definitely understood why Leonard had wound up in that bar last night.
The guys' apartment was pretty much exactly what she'd expected in some ways—TV, desks with laptops, entertainment centre, at least three separate game consoles, and every shelf packed to overflowing with DVDs, video games, books, comics, models and action figures—and surprising in others: it was immaculately clean and organized, in a way that she didn't think she'd ever seen in any guys-only home anywhere. Between the living area and the kitchen sat a whiteboard on an easel, covered with equations and calculations that looked like nothing more than multicoloured pasta to her. Penny went to it, mouth open in amazement. "This looks like some serious stuff," she said. "Leonard, did you do this?"
"Actually that's my work," said Sheldon, with a pained-looking expression resembling a smile. He shrugged in an uncomfortable attempt at nonchalance. "It's just some quantum mechanics, with a little string theory doodling around the edges . . . ." His gaze followed hers to an offset part of the calculations in the lower corner of the board. "Uh, that part's just a joke. It's a spoof of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation."
To Penny it might as well have been Egyptian hieroglyphics. "Wow. You really are like one of those 'Beautiful Mind' genius-type guys, aren't you? This is really impressive."
"Um—I have a board," said Leonard, sounding even more awkward than Sheldon looked. "If you like boards, this is my board . . . ." His had been tucked against the wall by a bookshelf, and was covered even more thickly than Sheldon's with equally incomprehensible scribbles. Penny gawped at it. Hearing about 170+ IQs in a bar last night was one thing; seeing the physical evidence of it was quite another.
"Holy smokes," she said, for lack of anything more coherent to contribute.
Sheldon scoffed. "If by 'holy smokes' you mean a derivative restatement of the kind of stuff you can find scribbled on the wall of any men's room at MIT, sure."
"What?!" said Leonard indignantly.
"Oh, come on. Who hasn't seen this differential below 'here I sit broken hearted'?"
"At least I didn't have to invent twenty-six dimensions just to make the math come out," Leonard snapped.
"I didn't invent them, they're there."
"In what universe?!"
"In all of them, that's the point!"
Penny had the unnerving feeling of treading water in a pool she'd suddenly discovered to be too deep for her swimming skills. Were these guys even speaking English? It sounded like it, but she wasn't getting more than half of this. She sat down on the couch, trying to think of a way to divert the conversation before they left her behind completely. "Uh, do you guys mind if I start?" she asked, lifting the takeout bag.
Sheldon turned to look at her, then blinked. "Um, Penny—that's where I sit." He indicated the left end of the couch, which she currently occupied.
She smiled invitingly at him and patted the cushion beside her. "So sit next to me." She'd usually found this sort of thing made guys much more cooperative.
This time it didn't work. "No, I sit there," Sheldon insisted.
Penny blinked. "What's the difference?"
"What's the difference?" Sheldon repeated incredulously.
"Here we go," Leonard muttered, going to the armchair.
"In the winter that seat is close enough to the radiator to remain warm, and yet not so close as to cause perspiration," Sheldon told her. "In the summer it's directly in the path of a cross breeze created by open windows there, and there." Reflexively, Penny found herself following his pointing finger. "It faces the television at an angle that is neither direct, thus discouraging conversation, nor so far wide as to create a parallax distortion—" He broke off, perhaps finally registering her expression. "I could go on, but I think I've made my point."
With some effort, Penny closed her mouth, which had fallen open. She had still thought, in some small part of her mind, that Leonard might have been exaggerating. "Do you want me to move?"
"Well . . . ."
"Just sit somewhere else," Leonard ordered him. Sheldon muttered an aggravated concession and began circling the apartment, rejecting place after place until Leonard lost his patience. "Sheldon, sit!" he barked, and Sheldon plopped onto the other end of the couch. Valiantly, he tried to look as if he was perfectly comfortable.
Leonard cleared his throat and smiled at Penny, clearly trying to restore whatever passed for normal amicability in the apartment. "Well, this is nice," he said. "We don't have a lot of company over."
"That's not true," Sheldon piped up. "Koothrappali and Wolowitz come over all the time."
"Yes, I know, but…"
"Tuesday night we played Klingon Boggle until one in the morning." Klingon Boggle?
"Yes, I remember," said Leonard, looking pained.
"I resent you saying we don't have company."
"I'm sorry."
"That is an antisocial implication."
"I said I'm sorry." Leonard was turning red, whether from anger, embarrassment or both Penny couldn't tell. She decided to redirect the conversation again before he exploded, and asked the first question she could think of.
"So, Klingon Boggle?"
Leonard didn't look much less embarrassed having to explain the term. "Yeah, it's like regular Boggle but . . . in Klingon." Hurriedly he added, "That's probably enough about us. Tell us about you!"
Penny clapped her hands together, finally feeling like she was back on familiar ground. She'd never had any problem talking about herself. "Um, me, okay, I'm a Sagittarius, which probably tells you way more than you need to know—"
"Yes, it tells us that you participate in the mass cultural delusion that the Sun's apparent position relative to arbitrarily defined constellations at the time of your birth somehow affects your personality," said Sheldon.
Penny blinked. "Participate in the what?"
"I think what Sheldon's trying to say is," Leonard intervened, "Sagittarius wouldn't have been our first guess." He smiled apologetically, which was about the only thing that kept her from losing her temper. Sheldon's verbose phrasing might have blown past her on first hearing, but she'd endured enough scoffing about astrology to recognize it by tone, if nothing else.
Intuition told her, however, that Sheldon would find it more unpleasant to be simply ignored than challenged, so she simply said, "Oh yeah," with blithe indifference. "A lot of people think I'm a water sign." She was rewarded by the subliminal tightening of Sheldon's mouth, and smugly congratulated herself. This guy might be ten times as smart as her in some ways, but he wasn't that mysterious when you came down to it.
She confined herself to typical introductory small talk after that. Some of it she'd told Leonard last night, but she dutifully played out revealing it again as if they were meeting for the first time, which turned out to be an oddly enjoyable acting exercise—it felt kind of like being a secret agent, infiltrating a community with the help of an allied mole. Some of it, like the screenplay she was working on, was genuine news to both the guys, although Leonard looked more impressed than Sheldon. Some things, like Leonard's dietary problems (he was lactose-intolerant and couldn't process corn? Really?), were news to her, and made her belatedly glad she hadn't suggested anything with Bailey's Irish Cream in it last night. Finally, she got around to mentioning that her shower was broken, and with almost immediate reflex, Leonard did exactly what she'd half-hoped he would: "Our shower works," he volunteered.
"Really? Would it be totally weird if I used it?"
"Yes," said Sheldon instantly, half a heartbeat ahead of Leonard's "No." Sheldon looked at Leonard incredulously and repeated, "No?" which got an emphatic "No," and Sheldon cringed and offered a strained final "No." Penny worked hard to keep from smiling; it was like watching a smart but half-trained dog and his owner. "It's right down the hall," Leonard finished, pointing the way.
"Thanks," she said sincerely. "You guys are really sweet." But she gave Leonard a direct look and a very slight wink, doing her best to indicate which guy in particular she found especially sweet. From Leonard's blush, it worked. She had to repress an urge to grin as she went down the hall and found the bathroom. Not that it wasn't true, after all; she suspected Leonard would have gladly offered the shower, even if they'd only just met now.
Then, as she closed and locked the door, her grin faltered. She normally had no problem letting guys do things for her because she was cute, as long as she was sure in her own mind it had nothing to do with whether she chose to sleep with them or not—a point she'd occasionally had to make Nebraska groin-kick style to some more piggish-minded guys. But she really didn't want Leonard to think she was the sort of girl who did put out in exchange for such things, especially given how much he'd already done for her . . . and more worryingly, she didn't want to think of herself as that kind of girl, either; her rotten feelings this morning had been proof enough of that. After all, hadn't Harry the bartender jumped to exactly the same conclusion last night? And hadn't she admitted to herself that she understood why? Considerably more subdued, she finished taking her clothes off, thinking back over her life and, for the first time, not much liking how some of it looked in hindsight.
Her unwonted quiet made the voices from the living room more audible, especially when Sheldon raised his voice in what sounded like a direct demand. "What exactly are you trying to accomplish here?"
"Excuse me?" Leonard said. Penny paused, listening.
"That woman in there isn't going to have sex with you just because you let her use our shower."
Penny pressed her hands to her mouth, suddenly overcome with giggles. Oh, isn't she? she thought, and for the first time consciously admitted what she'd known pretty much since waking up that morning: she would gladly jump Leonard again at the earliest opportunity, and had every intention of doing so.
"I'm not trying to buy sex with showers, Sheldon," said Leonard, sounding genuinely offended.
"Good. Then you won't be disappointed."
"What makes you think she wouldn't have sex with me?" A reasonable question, Penny thought, given they already had. "I'm a male, she's a female."
"Yes, but not of the same species." Penny's jaw dropped. And Leonard called this guy his friend?
"Look, I'm not going to engage in hypotheticals here," said Leonard. "I'm just trying to be a good neighbor. That's not to say that if a carnal relationship were to develop, I wouldn't participate." He muttered something else she couldn't quite hear through the closed door, but it sounded like it might be, "however briefly." Penny's heart twisted. Wow. Poor Leonard; he really did have self-esteem issues, didn't he?
"Do you think this possibility will be helped or hindered when she discovers your Star Wars No-More-Tears shampoo and conditioner?" said Sheldon, sounding curious. Penny blinked and looked in the shower, remembering why she'd come in here. Yup, there it was: Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, a matched shampoo and conditioner set. She smiled. Well, it might have put her off if she hadn't known anything else about him, but as far as she was concerned, anybody who could do what Leonard had done to her last night was man enough to afford a bit of little-boy indulgence now and then. Abandoning her eavesdropping, she stepped into the shower.
It might have been thinking about last night which did it, or her conscious admission that she both wanted and intended to jump Leonard again, but the sound of the curtain rattling closed brought back the memories of her last shower with a sudden, unexpected ferocity: her pelvis against Leonard's face, her head falling backwards as she shouted her ecstasy at the ceiling, and then her back against his chest as his delicate fingers worked magic in her core under the hot water, having to clench her arm with all her strength to hang onto him as her body erupted in pleasure and her legs turned to spaghetti. And the man who'd done all that was no more than twenty feet away, just outside the door . . . . Abruptly a little weak in the knees, Penny shook her head, massaged her face and began mentally counting times tables. She didn't have time for that right now. She leant over, turned on the water, adjusted it to the temperature she liked and then tried to switch from tub to shower. The switch wouldn't catch. She frowned, tried again, then again. Nothing.
Annoyed, she turned the water off, stepped back out, grabbed a towel and wrapped it around herself, then went back out to the living room. "Hey, is there a trick to getting it to switch from tub to shower—?" she began, then stopped. Two more people had arrived in the apartment: one was a wiry, Jewish-looking guy with a bowl haircut, even shorter than Leonard, in a red shirt, turtleneck and ridiculously tight jeans; the other was a handsome dark-eyed Indian guy in a blue windbreaker, a baseball cap and a sweater vest. Both were gaping at her in amazement, though the Indian guy looked more discomfited while the Jewish guy's hungry gaze seemed positively skeevy.
"Oh. Hi, sorry. Hello," she said, sheepishly smiling and wishing for a bathrobe.
"Enchanté, Mademoiselle," said the short guy, with a bow and a flourish. Leonard rolled his eyes. "Howard Wolowitz, CalTech Department of Applied Physics." He leaned casually on the wall, as if that would somehow make him look taller. "You may be familiar with some of my work; it's currently orbiting Jupiter's largest moon taking high-resolution digital photographs."
Well, no self-esteem issues for this guy. "Penny," said Penny. "I work at the Cheesecake Factory." Though saying that aloud made her think uncomfortably about her self-esteem.
"Come on," said Leonard, stepping in. "I'll show you the trick with the shower." He moved past her and headed back towards the bathroom; she followed gratefully.
"Bon douche!" said Howard.
"I'm sorry?"
"It's French for 'good shower'. It's a sentiment I can express in six languages."
"Save it for your blog, Howard," Leonard told him. When Howard called something after them in Chinese—presumably the same expression—Leonard cringed again as if punched. Penny sympathized. She had friends who embarrassed her too.
In the bathroom, Leonard fiddled with the tap controls. "This sometimes takes a second or two, it sticks," he muttered over his shoulder. He paused, frowning at the tap, and suddenly remembered the last shower he'd taken, an experience that felt in some ways like the first shower he'd ever taken: Penny's curves, pressed against him from head to foot; the taste of her as he devoured her like a starving man, and the triumph of hearing her shriek her pleasure above him; the feel of her most secret inner flesh under his fingers, offered up willingly to let him send her off to ecstasy once again . . . .
"Something wrong?" said Penny.
Leonard started, blushing fiercely. "Uh, nothing, nothing," he said, and resumed work, wondering if perhaps she hadn't sounded just a little too innocently amused. This time he exerted all his concentration and kept his mind on its task: at last, the switch caught, and hot water streamed down from the showerhead. Penny jumped in delight and applauded. Without pausing, she whipped off the towel and stepped past him just as he got up.
He caught the barest fleeting glimpse of her glorious body before sheer reflex drove him instantly around, averting his eyes as his blush burnt even hotter. It made no sense, but somehow seeing her nude in his own bathroom, with Sheldon, Howard and Raj just outside, felt far more presumptuous than anything that had happened last night. The motel room had been like some fantastic, alcohol-lubricated dreamworld where anything was possible, everything was permitted and nothing was quite real; this was his own, dull, daily, sober, regular mundane life, and acting as if he had a right to her intimacy as part of it just felt wrong.
Penny, it seemed, didn't share any such qualms. "Leonard?" she inquired, and Leonard opened his eyes to see her peering around the curtain at him. "What's with the modesty? Did you think I'd have a problem with you seeing me naked again? Because believe me, I don't." She grinned and ducked back into the shower. "I love the Darth Vader shampoo, by the way," she added over the noise of the water.
He swallowed, managing a smile, though his embarrassed flush hadn't eased. "Well, you know, I didn't want to presume—I mean, I'm glad to know there's no problem, but still. You know how it is," he went on, aware he was dangerously close to babbling but not able to think of a graceful way to stop. "Sometimes, people are like, 'Oh, well, last night was last night, let's not make more of it than it was,' no matter how—" He had to gulp as memory crashed over him again. "—how awesome it was . . . or how much you'd love to do it again, like, right now—" His voice had dropped to a mumble, and finally he had to draw in a shuddery breath. He couldn't stop wondering what would happen if he just took off his clothes and jumped in after Penny.
"Um . . . actually, Leonard—" Behind the curtain, Penny cleared her throat with what sounded like unusual vigour. Leonard blinked. Could it be, just possibly, that he wasn't the only one struggling with overheated flashbacks? "I hate to do this to you," she went on, "but there is just one more, like, teensy-tiny little favour you could do for me, if you felt like it . . . ."
"Really? 'If I felt like it'?" Leonard couldn't keep the sarcasm out of his voice. "Exactly what do you think the odds are I'm going to say 'no', after remembering everything you just reminded me of? Every move, every touch . . . ." He found himself staring at the shower curtain as if hypnotized, watching the memories play out upon it. Penny's silhouette had stopped moving. "Every kiss . . . stroke . . . sound . . . taste—"
"Oh for God's sake, Leonard, just say yes or no already, okay?" Penny's interruption was startlingly brusque. At the same time, her silhouette gave a head-to-foot shudder, and suddenly it seemed not only possible, but eminently plausible that she, too, was battling certain urges. Surprise, delight and hope burst in Leonard's breast, leavened by more than a little exasperation with himself; who was he fooling? Even if he'd only just met Penny, he knew what his answer would probably have been to anything she asked.
"All right, all right," he said, giving in. "What's the favour?"
"Well, when I walked out on Kurt yesterday I didn't have time to grab everything I wanted, so I ended up leaving behind not only my TV, but some cash I'd gotten out to cover the rent. I'd go back now myself, but I have to wait for the telephone and cable guys to come in and set me up. That cop last night, he said they keep their drunk and disorderlies in for twenty-four hours, right?"
"Yeah, that's right, he—" Comprehension dawned. "Oh, no," Leonard groaned.
He could hear the grin in her voice. "Ah, the 'penny' drops, right, sweetie?" Penny stuck her head back around the curtain, meeting Leonard's disbelieving expression with a smile. "Listen, Kurt's still going to be in jail for another couple of hours; all I need is somebody just to take my key, go over there, get the stuff and bring it back. No biggie."
"And if he comes back early and catches me there? Engaged in carrying out what for all intents and purposes is gonna look like a robbery?" Leonard glared at her.
Penny raised her eyebrows hopefully. "Convince him you're only getting what doesn't belong to him anyway? Come on, you're like ten times as smart as he is." She tilted her head and gave a moue of pitifulness. "Pleeeeease, Leonard?"
Leonard lifted his hands, exasperated and dismayed in equal measure. "Look, Penny, I'm sorry; I really want to help you, but come on. If Kurt catches me in his place he'll do his level best to break every bone in my body, you know that! Do you really want me to run that risk for a TV set?"
Penny frowned. "Okay, well, the TV I can do without, but could you at least try to get the rent cash? Seriously, Leonard, I had like eighteen hundred dollars in there, and I need that. It's in a drawer in our—his—bedroom."
"Oh, God." Leonard shook his head. "You really know how to make things difficult, don't you. Look, if I could get Frank to come with me and help that would be different, but I can't pull him away from his day job for this, and if Kurt comes home at the wrong time, I'm a dead man. If I were you I'd just call the police."
Penny bit her lip. For all his very real misgivings, Leonard found himself unable to take his eyes off that lower lip, or from the flash of those small, perfect white teeth. Then, suddenly, she smiled. "Tell you what," she said, her eyes glinting. "Can you set a timer on your phone?"
Leonard blinked. "Um, sure. Why?"
"'Cause I bet I can get you to change your mind in no more than thirty seconds." She waved at him. "Go ahead, set it up. Thirty seconds, tell me when it's running. If you can still say no after it beeps, I'll stop asking."
Leonard sighed, pulled out his phone, tapped the appropriate commands and then held it up to show the number counting down—0:30, 0:29, 0:28. "Okay, fine, we're rolling. Now what are you—"
He stopped, the breath audibly locking in his throat, as Penny stepped out of the shower in a long, sinuous movement and stretched her arms up high, lifting her breasts. Water dripped off her arms, her hips, and her nipples, which she had evidently tweaked into erection during his moment of distraction. With a roll to her hips that had to be deliberate, she sauntered towards him, never taking her eyes from his, tilting her head forward to look up at him through her lashes. On each step she bounced slightly, giving her breasts just enough agitation to remind him of all the much more vigorous movements of last night.
Coming up to him, she brought her body almost but not quite into contact with his, and took his free hand to slide it around her waist and down to her backside. She slid her other hand up his cheek into his hair, brought his face forward, and rubbed her nose lightly against his, moving her face around to give their lips the most tantalizingly faint hint of contact while never locking in for a solid kiss. He could feel her breath on his mouth, his own more and more unsteady by the second. Twice, he tried to move forward to bring their lips together, and each time she pulled back just enough to thwart him without breaking the flickering contact. The hand she had placed on her behind was moving seemingly of its own accord, squeezing and massaging that firm, perfect muscle; he could hear the effect in her own increasingly rapid breathing, and the ache that had erupted in his groin was clawing its way up through his brain to the point where he was just about ready to forget that Sheldon, Howard and Raj were all outside, within easy hearing distance—
Beep-Beep-Beep! The jolt of startled adrenaline snapped them both back to clarity. Leonard almost dropped his phone, and Penny stepped back quickly, breaking contact. She folded her arms across her breasts, turned half-away from him and swiveled her hips to complete the turn, concealing everything without donning a single piece of clothing. "Well?" she said, dropping her chin again to look up through her eyelashes and pushing her lips out in a kittenish, unbelievably sexy pout.
Leonard stared at her. Then he threw his hands up in the air, spun on one heel and opened the bathroom door. "Sheldon!" he called. "We've got an errand to run!" He glared back at her in something that mixed exasperation and lust, but as their eyes met, she flushed; it was clearly tilting towards lust for them both. "What's the address?"
She told him, then nodded to her discarded shorts on the floor. "My key's in the front pocket." She ducked back into the shower as he got her key, then stuck her head out around the curtain again. "Honestly, Leonard, I really cannot tell you how grateful I am for this."
"Yeah, yeah," muttered Leonard, lust now tilting firmly back towards exasperation, with himself this time. God, his mother had been right; he really was a victim of his own baser urges, wasn't he?
"But . . . ." Penny's voice dropped almost an octave, taking on a husky, meaningful tone that snapped his head back up. "I'd be more than willing to show you how grateful I am," she went on, not taking her eyes from his, "if you felt like coming by later . . . ." She gave him her cat's smile again.
Leonard gulped loudly enough it was audible over the noise of the shower.