Chapter Text
He plays fast and hard with the revelations after that.
She trumps him anyway.
*
"I don't believe in love, not as you conceptualize it," he begins, after he pulls away. "Love is no more than a bundle of crude instincts and neurochemical reactions, i.e. an initial stage of infatuation triggered by dopamine and serotonin followed by a more lasting attachment cemented by elevated levels of oxytocin, the base aim of which is little more than a mammalian drive to ensure the propagation of the species. Furthermore, I always believed that homo novus was above base biological impulses, that concentration and productivity could only be damaged by the distraction of a long-term partnership."
Oh, Penny thinks, too spellbound to speak and too drained to cry anymore. The pit of her stomach lurches, but it's hard to think about physical sensations beyond his hands on her--one cupping her good shoulder, the other still pressed to her cheek. Oh.
"And my parents--" Up to this point his tone has been flat, pouring out polysyllabic word after word with the ease of a man born to academia. (Even though he wasn't, she reminds herself, even though he is.) But now there's just the tiniest hitch to his voice, and she understands the infinite nuances that lie under And my parents--. She remembers the inadvertent revelation that day in the comic book shop, remembers the way his voice rose as he recited Damn it, George and drunk as hell and making Sheldon cry. He has a perfect memory; that conversation had almost certainly been verbatim.
Clearly, Sheldon isn't the only member of the Cooper family who is a complete and total emotional fucktard.
And now she wonders why she didn't see it before--she pegged the rest of her boys' dysfunctions almost from the beginning, recognized early on that Howard's sleazy overcompensation and Raj's muteness and Leonard's--well, the way Leonard throws himself at any woman who shows him a hint of kindness and plenty who don't--she knows and has known that those are all just defense mechanisms. Even the geeky, little-boy obsessions; she won't go so far as to say that they're wholly rooted in empty childhoods and wacko parents and getting beat up too often on the playground, but there's something entirely too escapist about the thousands of comic books and the hundred compulsive viewings of Star Trek to wave either aside as simple hobby.
She wonders how she couldn't see it before; Sheldon's idiosyncrasies are so much more ingrained, almost ritualized, that they seem like a different horse entirely, but now she wonders how much worse Sheldon's isolation must have been, what sort of things he must have gone through--because Sheldon's fracture isn't a painful, deep-seated need for acceptance that manifests itself as a stutter. Sheldon shuns human contact entirely.
Sheldon doesn't even think of himself as human.
This comes to her in a flash, the connections made almost instantly, but thank God her painkillers are wearing off because if she said one lick of that out loud Sheldon would be off like a shot. Probably she can't speak; her lips round and she lets out a puff of air, a tiny little, "Oh." She doesn't think he's aware that his thumb is stroking in soft circles against her jaw.
If she can't articulate that tangled mess of intuition, though, a part of her seems determined to say something. "But you tell your mother you love her--" She's arguing in the dark, it feels like. She doesn't even know why she's arguing. This sure doesn't feel like an argument.
Sheldon frowns. "Even I know the different between familial affection and--"
"Say it," she demands.
His thumb stops moving, and, hard-headed as ever, he drags the conversation in a new and horrible direction. "In addition, Leonard is my best friend in the whole world. I don't"--his nose crinkles, like he's trying to sniff out the right word--"poach. Although I can't say the same for..."
Mm, and there it is, that long-dormant dragon rearing its beastly head. She knows it was a rotten thing Leonard did to him, lying about the monopoly--monopole--the experiment, but they all thought Sheldon was over it, that he was just being Sheldon and throwing a typical Sheldon-the-alien fit--now, although his face is smooth, she can read the hairline cracks in his blue, blue eyes.
(How she could have ever thought him a robot--)
"Say it," she hisses, and wraps her fingers around his wrist.
"No," he says, now oddly gentle.
"Why not? Why won't you--"
"Penny, you are so right-brained it's a miracle you can add two and two and not come up with five. Frankly," he says, and the smugness that she absolutely should not find attractive is tugging at the corners of his mouth, "it's a miracle we can communicate at all."
Aha. Now she gets it. Everything between them is an argument.
The way she sees it, she has two options. She can keep her mouth shut and let him herd her into a nice little corner, convince her that, oh, that's she's delusional or that he's made a mistake or that they're just too different--
Or she can woman up, fight dirty, and beat him at this game.
Because, and this is something she's just starting to understand--because the same force that lives in Sheldon is in her, too. It has to be, because otherwise she wouldn't be able to go head-to-head with him, because otherwise she wouldn't have left Kurt even after he threatened to take all the money in their joint account. At eighteen she moved across the country with two suitcases and six-hundred dollars; at seventeen she walked in and out of an abortion clinic by herself, even though people were still shot in Nebraska for That Sort Of Thing; at sixteen she showed up at homecoming with her head held high after her brother was arrested not three hours earlier in the school parking lot for dealing meth. Call it grit or backbone or stubbornness, she's got it in spades.
The next step is logical.
"You," she says, "are a big coward."
*
In traditional Spanish bullfighting, a matador faces the bull on-foot only after the bull has been thoroughly tested by lancers and flagmen. The bull itself is more than eleven-hundred pounds of solid, angry muscle, so first a picador on horseback pierces it just behind the neck and two banderilleros stick it in either shoulder. Only then does the matador enter the ring with his red cape and his sword and face down his enemy in what is perhaps the world's last formalized blood-sport. The matador, if he succeeds in killing the bull, wins no more than the applause of the crowd and, if he has fought exceptionally well, an ear from the bull's corpse.
Penny has no lancers, no horse, and no sword. She charges forward with her red banner anyway, because she stands the chance of winning much, much more than a flesh trophy.
On the other hand, it is possible that she's still high; but if she is, it's more from his kisses than any medication.
*
"Excuse me?" he says, his voice rising on the last note like he's just sucked a roomful of helium.
"You heard me," she says. "Coward."
And then she proves that even if he is chickenshit, she isn't, because she swings a knee over his legs and straddles him.
"What do you think you're doing?" Low, urgent, definitely not in control: She's flipped off the safety.
"You listen to me, Sheldon Lee Cooper," she says. Oh, this is going to be good, this is going to be very good; it's as if all of his confidence, all of his arrogance, has seeped into her. Maybe it was that kiss. Maybe it's been building for three years. Maybe Penny's finally got him lined up in her sights. He started this thing when he couldn't keep his stupid blue eyes shut, but she sure as hell is going to finish it.
"You don't get to explain to me why we wouldn't, okay? Have you even thought about what will happen if I pay attention, huh? You think about that? What if I marry Leonard, Sheldon? You'd get to watch, front row seats as I walk down that aisle--" Oh yeah, she's got him now and he doesn't even know it; his arm is flexed beneath her palm and his jaw is clenched tight enough to shatter his teeth. She can handle him, now that she knows he's male underneath all that sanitizer. She can put up with the schedules and the nagging and the accidental hurtfulness, now that she knows that he can, that does love her, and with the intense, almost fanatic devotion he brings to everything that matters. It's written all over his face, in an expression so transparent she marvels.
"Maybe we'll make you godfather, huh, would you like that? Or I'll move in over here with Leonard and you can have my place. Maybe I'll leave the bed for you, Sheldon, how 'bout that?"
"Penny--"
"You're so sure that Leonard and I are going to fall apart, but what if that doesn't happen? Can you take another six months of waking up to me in the kitchen wearing his clothes? How about another six years? How about a lifetime?" She's practically hissing in his ear now; the cords along his neck are standing out in sharp relief.
"Penny--"
"Are you just going to stand by and watch as we fizzle out? What if we're already married the first time his interest wanders, you gonna just pat me on the hand while I cry and send me back to him? How's that working for you, Sheldon? How does that sound--"
"Stop," he snarls. His hands close like vices around her wrists and he pushes her back, away, but she dips her neck and rests her forehead against his. That eloquent gesture disarms him; the circle of his fingers turns from restraint to caress.
"Sheldon. What do you want?"
"What I want is irrelevant." His certainty breaks her heart.
"No, sweetie, it's not," she says. "What do you want?"
He gives a little wet hiccup, and she realizes that Sheldon Cooper, that Sheldon Cooper, is himself on the verge of tears. "I want to label you," he says, without looking at her. "I would like to label you and put you away neatly where you belong so I can move on. You persistently refuse to fit into a neat category, however. You make me angry. You tell me I'm wrong. I don't want to--"
"To what?" she whispers.
"I don't want to--"
"Say it."
Finally, inevitably, he lifts his eyes to lock with hers. There's the expected drag of reluctance, but she can also read a fierce, impossible joy caged just under his skin. And he says, then he actually says and she can't keep her own joy under lock anymore, she smiles at him like he's the sun and the moon.
He says: "I don't want to love you."
"So don't," she counters, effortlessly.
"It isn't that easy," he admits, an admission that would normally bowl her over, but right now she's so far above her daily frame of reference that that there's no room for astonishment.
"Then I guess you've got the rest of your life to label me," she says. "I'm not going anywhere."
"...Yes?"
"Yes," she answers, and twines her fingers with his, and lays one on him. His kisses are dry like fine wine and clean like spring, structured and elegant and unlike anything she's ever known before. Bazinga, she thinks, nonsensically, and kisses him again.
She pulls away to breathe. "The truth isn't so bad, is it?"
"No," he tells her throat, and then, some time later, "Penny, what are we going to tell Leonard?"
"Lies," she says. "Lots of lies."
"I can't lie!"
She sighs. "Then we're honest, I guess. Might as well go for broke."
"And then what?"
Penny curls around him and buries her face in the crook of his neck. "And then you buy me some adhesive ducks for the bathtub," she says. Exhaustion is staring to set in; she's been strapped to an emotional roller coaster for the past hour, and she still hasn't had her next painkiller. She could really, really use a nap right about now.
"And then what?" Sheldon asks again. Is he asking just to keep her talking, or because he just wants to know, or because...
Does it matter?
"And then I teach you all about the difference between having coffee and having coffee. Which looks like it'll be a lot of fun," she adds. "And then you win the Nobel Prize and I star in a box-office hit. And then you retire and drive me crazy with all your free time and I don't even care."
"You seem to have skipped some fairly vital steps." Sheldon's voice is a deep rumble under her ear.
"We'll fill in the blanks later," she murmurs. She is, literally, seconds from drifting off, as content as she can ever remember being.
"Penny? Are you falling asleep?"
"Mmhm," she purrs.
Sheldon clears his throat. "While you're sleeping," he says, "would you like me to make an appointment to have your engine checked?"
She cracks an eye. "Hey, Sheldon? You know how that whole listening-to-me thing worked out pretty well a few minutes ago?"
"I suppose--"
"Then shut up and hold me."
For the second time today, he defers to her better judgment.