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awmperryThe Star Turtle Embarkation
Title: The Star Turtle Embarkation – Chapter 3: Things Take Flight
Spoilers: None specific, but may be mild general spoilers through season two.
Rating: PG-13 (Future chapters may sneak up to R for Mildly Mucky)
Word Count: 1733 (Ch 3)
Disclaimer: The Big Bang Theory is property of Warner Brothers and CBS, Discworld is property of Terry and Lyn Pratchett. All other IP property of their respective owners, no challenge is intended or financial gain made. The story is fictional, but some of the people aren’t entirely; I’d like to say no resemblance to people living or dead is intended, but you can’t have everything.
Summary: When his other friends drop out, Sheldon is stuck taking Penny to the Discworld Convention in England. It may not be the first time Penny’s made Sheldon blue, but definitely the first time she’s been so literal about it...
Part one at http://awmperry.livejournal.com/34629.html
Part two at http://awmperry.livejournal.com/35117.html
She decelerates rapidly, and her face stops less than an inch from my own; had our noses been aligned it would certainly have resulted in epistaxis and severe pain at the very least. But instead, almost continuing her motion from the fall, she locks her gaze with mine for a couple of seconds, then briefly closes the distance to my mouth and aligns her lips to it and –
Gliiiip.
* * *
“Danger! Danger!”
“Sheldon, what the hell...” Leonard turned just in time to see Sheldon round the corner into the hall, and a moment later heard his door slam. He stared after him for a moment, then turned to the couch where Sheldon had been a moment earlier.
Penny lay on the floor beside it, grimacing up at the ceiling. Leonard put his coffee down and went to help her up.
“You, uh, want to catch me up?”
“Nothing.” She flopped down on the couch – in Sheldon’s corner – and rubbed her shoulder. “It’s my fault. I, uh, think I gave him a tiny bit of a shock.”
“You gave him a shock? Are you all right?” Her shoulder must have dinged the coffee table; it was already starting to bruise. “You want some, uh... ice or something? I’m pretty sure Sheldon has an ice pack in the medical kit. What happened?”
“Honest, Leonard, I’m fine.” She looked embarrassed, not to mention thoughtful. “I’ll just go back home and –”
She’d tried to stand up, but fallen back onto the couch. Leonard grabbed the blanket off the chair and shook it out.
“Okay, Penny... Penny? Penny, look at me.”
“Hm?” She looked at him, focussing with some difficulty.
“Yeah, you’re not going anywhere. Come on, lie down. Stephanie’s coming over in an hour anyway on the way back from the hospital, so you just get some rest and I’ll ask her to, I dunno, make sure you don’t have a concussion or something. Okay?”
She looked at him blearily, then nodded and laid back, curling up at that end of the couch. He picked Sheldon’s bag off the floor and snuck it in under her head along with a small pillow, before draping the blanket over her. She smiled, snuggling into the cushions.
Leonard headed over to check up on Sheldon. But out of the corner of his eye, just before he left the living room, he saw her wrap an arm around the bag, snuggling up to it as if it were a teddy bear.
That, he decided, would be something to ask Sheldon about.
His door was shut, of course. He didn’t respond to a half dozen knocks, which was unusual in itself, so Leonard opened the door and looked in.
“Sheldon?”
The room was dark, with just the evening light from outside sneaking in through the window.
“Sheldon, are you okay?”
Leonard turned the light on.
Sheldon was sitting in the farthest corner of the room, curled up in the gap between the corner and his dresser. His eyes darted everywhere, panicky. This was going to be bad.
“Sheldon, what happened?”
He just whimpered, scrabbling briefly against the fake wood floor to press himself further into the corner.
“Sheldon?”
Nothing. Leonard sighed, glanced around.
Sheldon’s Next Generation limited edition comm badge with magnetic backing lay in its usual place in the bookcase, and it gave Leonard an idea. He picked it up, and attached it to his sweater. Here goes nothing, he thought.
He tapped the badge, and the sound module chirped loudly. Sheldon twitched, his eyes focussing on something in the middle distance.
“Enterprise to Lieutenant Commander Cooper, report!”
Sheldon straightened markedly, his right hand instinctively jabbing the spot on his chest where the badge would sit.
“Cooper here.”
Leonard grinned. It had been that or the ‘rebooting Terminator’ gimmick, but that had some nasty side effects.
“We need you back on board, Commander. Right now.”
“Yes. Of course. Yes...” His face firmed up, and he seemed to rejoin the land of the living. More or less.
* * *
Curious.
“Leonard? You’re in my bedroom again.”
“What happened with Penny?”
“I...” Even odder. I couldn’t remember. Or more accurately, I could remember something, but nothing even remotely plausible. “I don’t remember.” I considered again. “We should recheck the best before dates on this morning’s eggs. Clearly something I have eaten has been deficient or host to some form of psychotropic bacterium. The alternative is beyond the realms of probability.”
“What alternative? I’m pretty sure you haven’t ingested any hallucinogens in the last few days. At least,” he added, “no more than usual.”
“The alternative, I fear, is that Penny kissed me. On the... oral region. With lingual involvement and considerable labial compression.”
“Yeah, you probably want to be careful how you phrase that...” His brain caught up with his ears. “She kissed you?”
“Yes.”
“So that’s what’s bothering you?”
“Distasteful and unhygienic as the experience was, if it happened, which it of course patently didn’t and could not have...”
“Sheldon...”
A realisation struck me. “...I believe it may have precipitated a cascading release of dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins in my hypothalamus and septum pellucidium. Quite against all reason.”
“Sheldon, are you saying...”
I considered the overwhelming neurological, psychological and, admittedly, physiological evidence.
“I will of course have to research the matter, but there is considerable evidence to suggest that I enjoyed it.”
* * *
Sheldon was still rambling, but Leonard wasn’t listening. Sheldon, asexual mitosist, whose reproductive system he had assumed would involve the phrase ‘batteries not included’, had enjoyed kissing Penny. Inadvertently, but still. And Penny had initiated it.
He glanced out the window, vaguely expecting to see a squadron of pigs fly past.
“...has of necessity forced me to reevaluate the psychosocial paradigm in effect between Penny and me,” Sheldon was saying, “which is complicated further by the pre-existing liaison between you and her...”
“Wait, why does that complicate it?” Leonard frowned, perching himself on the edge of the bed. Sheldon didn’t even blink.
“My observations indicate that it’s considered impolite to ‘date’ a person one’s friend has attempted to establish a romantic or sexual attachment with.”
Leonard sighed and shrugged, staring at the floor for a moment before looking back at Sheldon.
“That cat died a long time ago.” He stood, and held out a hand to pull Sheldon up. “Come on. Penny hit her head pretty hard, and you two probably need to talk.”
Sheldon nodded reluctantly, and let himself be pulled to his full height. It took longer than Leonard had expected.
* * *
When they returned to the living room, Stephanie met them in the corridor.
“How is she?” Sheldon asked abruptly, before Leonard had time to even open his mouth.
“Let her get some rest, and she’ll be fine after a good night’s sleep,” Stephanie replied. “She has a very mild MTBI, but it should clear by tomorrow.” She smirked. “She told me what happened, by the way. You’ll make a cute couple.”
Sheldon goggled at her. “No, I don’t think so. We’re not a... I... No. Leonard?”
“Be nice, Stephanie. He can’t do teasing right now.” He put an arm around her waist and ushered her towards his room, glancing back at where Sheldon was timidly approaching Penny. “Let’s give them a minute.”
* * *
“Penny.”
“Sheldon.” She tried to scramble to her feet, but fell back onto the cushions. Was that a flicker of reaction she saw? Almost as if... nah, he wouldn’t try to catch her. Probably.
“I would normally draw your attention to the fact that you’re in my spot –”
“Aw, Sheldon...”
“– but in light of the circumstances, and bearing in mind that I was the inadvertent cause of your vertiginous condition I think it only fair to make a temporary exception for you until your current condition passes.” She gaped at him. But he wasn’t finished. “And... I apologise for my precipitate reaction which led to your injury.”
“For your what to the what now?”
“For launching you off me, causing you to bounce off the table and impact the floor.”
“Oh.” She blinked, still woozy. She reached out a wobbly hand. “Apology accepted. And, uh, I shouldn’t have given you a shock like that. We good?”
Sheldon stared contemplatively at the hand for a moment, then took it.
“Agreed.”
“Now sit your ass down, staring up at you like this is freaking me out.”
He looked around, finally perching daintily on Leonard’s armchair.
“Ah.” As he watched, Penny was already starting to take Stephanie’s advice, drifting off to sleep.
Just before he dozed off as well, he thought he heard her mumble, “...just wanted to open the box...”
* * *
He woke up at six in the morning. She still hadn’t let go of his hand.
A few days later, two days before they left, a twelve-pound parcel arrived from Amazon.com for Sheldon.
* * *
At LAX, Penny glanced through the archway as Howard walked towards it.
“Do you think he remembered not to wear one of those huge belt buckles?”
“Unlikely,” Sheldon said. “But even his taste in accoutrements shouldn’t be a problem. They’ll just tell him to put it through the machine and he’ll...” He glanced through the archway. “Oh dear.”
“What, Sheldon?” Penny followed his gaze, then – “Oh, crap.”
The security officer waiting airside was young, attractive – and female. Abundantly female.
“Oh, Howard,” she whispered under her breath, “please don’t say something stupid.”
Sheldon sighed and hefted his satchel onto the x-ray’s belt.
“Statistically unlikely.”
The arch beeped as Howard and his belt buckle went through... and Penny could just imagine the results.
As it turned out, she didn’t need to.
“Why hello,” Howard leered, waggling his eyebrows at the young TSA officer stepping towards him, brandishing a metal detector wand. “I think I know what you’re thinking.”
“Uh-huh.” She switched the wand on and stepped closer. “Raise your arms out from your sides.”
“Oh God,” Penny whispered, “this is gonna be bad.”
“You’re thinking, ‘Is that a bomb in his pocket, or is he just pleased to see me?’”
Penny winced.
* * *
“I guess there’s always a chance he’d enjoy being strip searched,” she said, rummaging around the side of her seat. “Sheldon, you’re sitting on my seat belt.”
Sheldon started to reach down the side of his seat, but her hand darted in and retrieved it first. He looked as if he was about to say something, but thought better of it and returned to the train wreck that was Howard.
“I expect not. TSA protocols mean that the screener searching him is unlikely to be the woman he intended.” Was she imagining things, or did a tiny smile flicker across his face? “In fact, it’s unlikely to be a woman at all.”
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Date: 2009-04-29 11:38 am (UTC)CCA
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Date: 2009-04-29 02:06 pm (UTC)1) This is interesting. Is it going to be a set number of chapters, or will you just keep writing until it is done?
2) FYI http://blogs.psychologytoday.com/blog/aspergers-diary/200904/big-bang-theory
3) This story reminds me of when I had my first crush, and I liked to look into the mirror and think of my crush, and then other things, and then my crush again and so on, so I could see my pupils dilate. It only occurs to me now that perhaps not everybody would do something like that.
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Date: 2009-09-20 08:57 am (UTC)LOL THIS IS AWESOME I WANNA TRY
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Date: 2009-09-20 09:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-20 10:13 am (UTC)