Word Count: 1912
Summary: "Glad I didn't go back to dating jerks from the gym" Penny's POV
Disclaimer: I don't own The Big Bang Theory or the characters.

I find him in the living room with his whiteboards around him, his best friend next to him as they speak to one another about something I don't really understand. But they are both arguing about it, clearly so focused on it that they don't even hear me come in.

Using that to my advantage, I stare at the two of you. Both have changed, not only physically but also mentally. Even if they both continue to be geniuses, long gone are the two men that I met who couldn't even look me in the eye. Despite their wardrobe not changing much, there are subtle differences from time to time. Not always, and I can only admit to myself that I do enjoy seeing him in his sweaters and shirts. Don't know why, but I do.

I sit on his desk chair watching them both, and not even the noise of the chair rolling away from the desk slows down the argument the two are in. Some good points seem to be made by both, judging by the pauses before something else is said. Interestingly, only one of them loves reminding people how smart he is.

Not my little homunculus though.

In the twelve years I've known him, I can only really remember once him telling an audience full of people – that he was nervous to talk in front of in the first place – that he too was smarter than everyone else in the room.

Thinking back to that man, so nervous about presenting his findings and yet seemingly so confident once he got in the groove of things, I wonder why he doesn't mention how smart he is more often. He can clearly have arguments about physics with his old roommate before the taller man stops being interested. Only he and his wife seem to have that effect on him. Everyone else just loses sooner, outsmarted quickly.

Not my husband. If he actually cares, he will argue about the subject for as long as needed.

Unfortunately for me, the door swings open, and all our friends enter, stopping their argument due to the smell of food that floods the apartment. They are both surprised to see me there, sitting in the chair looking at them, but I just smile.

Sheldon just goes in the direction of the food, suddenly realizing he's hungry.

My husband gets closer to me, a huge grin on his face.

"I won." He tells me, quietly, and I can't help but smile.

Sheldon gets up, bothered by the comment. His Vulcan hearing terrifies me sometimes, though it seems that hearing is very selective and doesn't always work.

"You did not."

Everyone else just stares at him before looking at Leonard, who stands up too and crosses his arm.

"Excuse me, but- "

"You lost."

"I did not."

The rest of us look at one another, Amy and I sighing knowing that the argument will go on until her husband's bedtime.

They start to argue, the words coming out of their mouth clearly meaning something to some people in the room except for me, and I find myself just eating my food and using their fight as background noise. Eventually, they move back to the whiteboard, both with markers in their hand trying to convey their point.

When I look up at our friends, Howard is using his legs as a table with his food on top of them, using his phone, and eating. Bernadette is confused staring at them as if trying to understand what they are saying. She probably does. Raj is staring at his food, sitting on the floor despite the empty chair that Leonard should be occupying. Amy looks back and forth between her food and the guys. She knows enough physics to carry on a conversation with them with barely any problem, but even she's not – at least seeming – interested.

And I, once again, find myself extremely confused at what's going on, until there's silence in the room.

When I look up from my food, everyone is staring at the guys, so I do it too. Sheldon is staring at the whiteboard, softly muttering 'no, no' over and over again. Leonard is just grinning, his arms crossed as if he just made the point of his life. Though knowing the both of them for as long as I do, it probably feels like it.

"It can't be."

"Remind yourself, Sheldon," Leonard starts, and Sheldon looks at him in horror. I don't know what their argument was about, but I'm fascinated by this result. "You might have gotten your PhD at sixteen and I only got mine at twenty-four, but that doesn't mean that I don't know things."

"But I'm smarter," Sheldon says, looking at his former roommate before staring at the board once more, likely trying to find some mistake Leonard had possibly made.

"Okay, fine. You are. That doesn't mean that the rest of us aren't smart too. And in this case, I'm right, and you're wrong."

"You take that back!" Sheldon exclaims, standing up straight.

"No." Leonard simply says, standing up straight too, though still shorter than the man in front of him.

"That's it. We're leaving." He says and makes a motion towards the door, only to turn around again to look at his wife. "Come on."

Amy rolls her eyes and sighs, grabbing her food and saying goodbye before moving towards the door. I know that walk, it's the walk of someone who is rethinking her life choices. My husband just sits in the chair smugly, and everyone is looking at him – me too, honestly – like he just did the most magnificent thing. However, I have to say, getting to prove Sheldon wrong was something everyone in that room thrived for and Leonard just managed to do that.

The rest of the night is spent making pointless conversation, even with Amy at some point coming back after finally getting a fidgeting Sheldon to fall asleep. She mentioned the plans he had made to annihilate Leonard, and I was about to say something, but Leonard just told Amy to tell the taller genius that he would never drive him anywhere ever again and that seemed to be enough of a threat that Amy could use, and the conversation was over there.

Eventually, a few days later, after the argument and its aftermath were over, I asked the girls if they enjoyed it when their husbands got into intellectual arguments, even if they didn't understand what they meant. Their responses were negative, with Amy saying that usually made Sheldon vengeful, angry, and basically impossible to live with; Bernadette said something about Howard not really doing that much.

I felt utterly alone in the department of finding extremely hot my husband's genius and using his knowledge against others.

That night ends with Sheldon coming over from across the hall, signaling that it's time for him to go to bed, for Bernadette to go get her husband and her husband's husband from across the hall, and for me to leave my old apartment and get into the apartment I share with my husband.

I help Amy clean up as we hear Bernadette's loud, angry voice yelling something about "not being interested in being the mother to two idiot teenagers" and for them "to get in the car quickly". Then loud footsteps that were clearly people running. With an eye roll – and then telling Sheldon that everything is okay and that he should go back to bed – we finish cleaning and then I head over to my apartment.

When I enter, he's in front of his board.

"Seriously? Gaming night ended less than ten minutes ago and you're already working?" I ask though I know the answer.

He looks at me with a smile, before looking back to his board. "I needed to write this down before I forgot." He writes something down before coming towards his desk, closer to me. "But now I'm realizing that I don't actually know how to fix it." He sighs. "I think it's going to be a long night."

I give him a sad smile, but then I bite my lip to prevent a smile before putting my arms around his neck. He looks confused at me and gives me a smile that tells me just that. I just pout, and he rolls his eyes.

"Come on, don't make me go to bed all by myself." I know just how to get him to do what I want him to do, and though sometimes I do feel guilty, this time I don't. Even if I hardly ever admit it to him, and would only drunkenly admit it to anyone else, his presence in my life matters so much that even knowing that he's in the living room while I'm in bed is too far away.

I don't need to say that to him using any words though, because he knows me well enough to understand my wordless words. A single glance tells me he's coming with me, even if his actions could be telling me otherwise. He grabs a notebook and writes something down, something I don't understand. If this was the afternoon I would ask him to explain it to me, not that I would remember or anything but just so that I could have this moment where my husband's confidence was high, there was no reason for it to not be.

But it's not, and I'm kind of tired too, so I wait for him to be done before getting a hold of his hand and walking towards our bedroom together. It's not every night that we go together to bed like this, hand in hand. Usually, one of us is already in bed when the other comes in from the bathroom and joins. But some nights we walk hand in hand – that typically happens when he's working, and I have to force him to go to bed otherwise he'll fall asleep at his desk at some point during the night without noticing – and I would be lying if I said that just holding his hand as an effect of me that I could never understand and wouldn't be able to explain.

Maybe there's some neurologic explanation that I could get Amy to explain to me, something about neurons and grey matter and some other random words I've heard her say when she and Bernadette talk about work during girls' night. But all those thoughts go away when I finally lay down in bed, my husband next to me setting his glasses down on top of his nightstand, and I close my eyes, ready to fall asleep even if I didn't actually feel that tired and it was still rather early – Sheldon's bedtime was around thirty minutes ago.

But still, after an entire week of arguments between my husband and our old roommate and current neighbor that inevitably extended to problems between me and my own best friend, I was rather tired. Leonard was already softly sleeping next to me, despite just lying down. Thankfully he was no longer snoring – apparently, that was only a problem for me now, and he started to try and fall asleep first to avoid hearing it – and was only softly breathing.

Closing my eyes, I found myself drifting off to dreamland, my last thought being that I was glad I didn't go back to dating jerks from the gym.

The End

I was rewatching some older episodes today, one from season 3 where the guys find a Lord of the Rings ring and then one from season six when Penny goes to visit Leonard's lab.

The season 3 episode is the inspiration for the last line - she said it while leaving Leonard's bedroom while he and Sheldon fought for the ring. The season 6 episode was the inspiration for the rest. Wish the writers had written more about Penny's love for his mind - I feel like I keep circling back to that thought.

Also, rewatching the early seasons made me actually care for Sheldon once more, and reminded me of the friendship between Leonard and Sheldon which I missed dearly in the later seasons. There was too much Sheldon and Amy and not a lot of friendship. I like Amy and Bernadette but there's a reason I enjoy the second episode from season eleven when Leonard announced that Physics is dead and then the guys plus Penny go to Richard Feynman's grave. That was the show I liked at first, just the five of them.

Anyway, hope everyone likes this.