They make enough money to get by, they have fans, they still have their artistic integrity mostly intact. But it’s so hard not to hope for something more. What’s worse is feeling like they deserve it.

She takes him to a gay bar.

Of course she takes him to a gay bar; there is no world in which she does not take him to a gay bar.

This is about Sheldon growing up to a world that’s bigger than just him.

"Yeah, I think she might have been going for Sheldon, but he has fantastic dodging reflexes, so... Amy was the weaker antelope. It's the way of nature, Leonard; she is red in tooth and claw."

"Did you kill a gypsy?"

"I'm not speaking to you."

“Penny,” Sheldon says. “I think you should major in theater.”

"You sound like you're worried, but that can't be right."

Bernadette isn't hard or cold or precise when Penny backs her up against the bar an hour after close and presses their lips together. She's pliant against Penny, and warm, and the squeak she makes in the back of her throat when Penny slides her hands over Bernadette's fuller, rounder waist is more than a little uncertain.

"It's OK -- we're friends. This can be normal. Here, hand me my pants." (Because that's a normal sentence for friends to say.)

“But I think…I think you like me beating you…I think you like Wesley Crusher outsmarting you, one-upping you… I bet you want Wesley to top you."

The backpedaling, oh god, the backpedaling. Raj is just making angry, muted noises (no booze at a teenage sleepover), but Howard -- Howard is in rare form. He calmly checks his strike count with Sheldon, but he's at two and the reset course now requires a physical education credit that no one's anxious to learn about.

"I don't think it's from the buildings," Sheldon said. His voice sounded flat and dead, and it startled her so much she jammed on the brakes. Hysterical Sheldon she could handle. Blowing everything out of proportion, no problem. But defeated, lifeless, dead-sounding Sheldon threw shivers up and down her spine and an icy pressure into her stomach. "Sheldon?"

Penny checked her reflection and pulled back her hair in one hand. A new elongated ring of teethmarks was just visible at the base of her neck, the skin unbroken but reddened and likely to bruise.

Penny shuts her own door and turns to the angel. "Seriously? You had to cockblock me with Leonard? What, are you jealous that I'll miss NBC's Monday night lineup?"

"Oh, my arrhythmia," Howard says, clutching his heart. Penny plops down next to him, hands curling against her lap. "Okay. So, that car crash actually killed me and this is hell."

This fic contains: explicit sexual situations, rampant infidelity, emotional fuckery, unhealthy romantic relationships, and the potential abuse of all forms of basic punctuation. Don't say you weren't warned.

Even though they haven't been on the bus in months, Penny's always still slightly surprised every time she wakes up in an actual bed, a flat steady surface that doesn't shudder and lurch with every turn and pothole. She wakes up confused and with a decent head start into hangover territory, and somewhere there is a phone ringing. Her face is pressed against Sheldon's bare back, and she tries to wipe her hand across where she's drooled on him. It's best to avoid his lectures before she's even seen coffee, let alone ingested it.

His brow creases. "I think," he says slowly, "that I don't believe in a universe so limited it has only enough room for one view of the cosmos." Never, never will he stop surprising her. "Yeah?" "Yes," he says. "Is it trivia time, or may I resume the episode?"

On day five, however, Penny bursts into his apartment and mutters, "Coffee." He has prepared it for her today. He has found that she is far less violent when he breaks up with her if she has had caffeine. It is only logical, if not kind, that he ply her with coffee first.

"Don't be an asshole, Penny," says Imaginary Dan Savage. "He knows his own body. Look at that fucking body language. You're basically raping his face."

She picks up her phone and goes inside, into the bathroom. She turns on the overhead light and studies her face in the mirror. She punches in a number on the phone without needing to look at the buttons. It's a number she's never forgotten, one she's wanted to call a thousand times. She can barely hear the ringing on the other end. Her heart mimics the roar of the waves only a few dozen feet outside the doors, thrums in her ears and throat. She feels the wind shift again.

"Did you just cross the line?" he asked. His voice sounded like it had gone up an octave. "How would I know? I can't exactly see the line." She inched a little bit more.

There seems to be a party going on in her birthing room, even though no one bothered to invite her. The guys are eating Mongolian beef and kung pao chicken while she enjoys a sumptuous dinner of ice chips and red Jell-O. The smell of their food is making her a little nauseated although she can hardly begrudge Sheldon a little dinner.

"I'm more than a bit concerned that you've turned into some sort of succubus," he said once, after they'd collapsed together, flushed and sweaty. "You're trying to steal my life energy, aren't you?"

But no, when she says she woke up she means that she got out of bed that morning, discovered that she was out of coffee, walked across the hall into the boys’ apartment (which, by this point, was really singular, but more on that later) without knocking, and only went as far as the counter before Sheldon was handing her the coffee without a word. Then she walked out and back into her apartment.

People will probably say that a Nebraskan Admiralty should hang below Presidency of the Earth. People, as far as Penny is concerned, can suck it.

"Hello! According to social convention, if you do not provide us with candy, we will vandalize your home!"

Meemaw came through the front door Velociraptor-first. "Oh holy shit!" said Penny.

Holy fucking shit. Sheldon must be absolutely dying she thinks, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. Leonard Nimoy is hugging Sheldon. He'll be insufferable for the rest of his life. And deservedly so.

Sheldon takes the cowboy hat off and hands it to her. "So help me, Penny, if you show that picture to anyone, you're dead." She's already sent it to Leonard, Raj and Howard. Four bars of coverage, even out here in Bumfuck Egypt. Technology is beautiful.

She wishes she’d thought to turn and look at him, wishes she could’ve seen him in this moment, with his face so bright and his heart so close to the surface. She’s pretty sure he doesn’t look like that when he plays Chopin, and understands a little better why he walked away from the conservatories and the concert halls. She might’ve thought it weakness once, or a flaw of character, but she knows now that it was desire, and determination, and courage. Walking away from what had been handed to him, choosing to work at something instead. She’s never thought him brave before, but she’s learned better now.

People will probably say that a Nebraskan Admiralty should hang below Presidency of the Earth. People, as far as Penny is concerned, can suck it.

Sheldon takes the cowboy hat off and hands it to her. "So help me, Penny, if you show that picture to anyone, you're dead." She's already sent it to Leonard, Raj and Howard. Four bars of coverage, even out here in Bumfuck Egypt. Technology is beautiful.

It starts in Pasadena, after their flight from Kansas City and a layover from hell, when he backs her up against the wall at Stuart’s store before they’ve even finished unpacking all their gear, with all the guys oblivious just around the corner and Penny’s heart beating madly in her chest. Things go fairly quickly after that.

"Oh God," she groans, around a mouthful of Phad Thai. "I need to get laid. Howard, not a word." The room freezes. Raj lets loose a squeak that has her wanting to apply WD-40 to his jaw. Leonard drops his spring roll. Sheldon swallows and says, "Are you masturbating regularly?" "Wow," Penny says. "I thought I could have this conversation, but it turns out I was completely wrong. Who wants to watch Star Wars?"

They go inside, and Penny almost forgets about the van. This is her first mistake.

"You don't have to, like, make out with her. Just go get your game on. It's cool." God, Howard's pretty good at this advice shit. Maybe he should just bow out of the game gracefully and retire. He can wear long velvet dressing gowns and dispense advice to distraught young fictional lesbians. He will be a guru, a modern-day guru with glorious hair, and he will often be holding a glass half-full of dark red wine. His mansion will have many cameras. For security purposes, of course.

"And that's obviously not it or I wouldn't have bruises all over my knees." | For some reason, that makes him flush an even deeper red.

“People can't be in your bedroom.” | “I have a crisis contingency plan. Please, don't argue with me. What would you prefer?”

Hello, future victims of Chuck Bartowski! Do not be afraid, I brought you beer to help you deal with your inevitable shame.

'it's cool. i put a flaw in our algorithm to trip him up. i give it ten secs before he figures it out & i have to screw it up more' he sent back to her.

Her lines are easy. It's scary how easy they are. Three years ago, they would've given her a headache. Now she can deliver a thirty-second rant about decomposition and ancient Greece in a way that makes people think she really does work in a quirky lab somewhere.

But—I didn't want to sleep with Harrison Ford, I want to be him.

While I deem such things arbitrary and subjective, it's scientific fact that those who society views as 'attractive' have more opportunities. In essence, our offspring would be unstoppable.

It comes as something of a shock when she throws the shoe at his head.

Meemaw came through the front door Velociraptor-first. | "Oh holy shit!" said Penny.

I want to face you.

"They have hot apple cider, the kind with the cinnamon sticks." | "Beverages of unknown provenance with potentially non-existent quality controls? Please."

Basically, she's spent the last ten minutes resisting any wayward urges to lick her way up his forearms.

"In reality, a spider's spinnerets are on the underside of its abdomen. So really, Spiderman should be web-slinging from his rear," Sheldon lectured, with an illustrative interpretive dance. Penny rescued the brimming bowl of cereal from his hands and placed it down next to Howard's on the table. | "Sheldon?" said Penny. "Remember our talk about before-breakfast talk and after-breakfast talk?"

His eyes narrowed. "You're been spending too much time on the TV Tropes wiki, haven't you?" | "...Maybe," she said.

"Though I fundamentally agree with Spock's decision to defer to Kirk's command expertise, you must admit that Captain Kirk ran a fairly shoddy ship." | "They're like brass," Penny explained, cupping her hands slightly, causing Shatner to choke on the sip of club soda he stole from his friend's glass.

Penny racks her brain for the next twenty miles, trying to think of a subtle way to bring up the topic of meeting your time-traveling self, or being sent on a mission to avert an apocalypse-related death. Finally she tells herself Forget it, Penny, it's Nerdtown. Sheldon and Leonard have weirder conversations six times a day. Sometimes before breakfast. Sometimes over Twitter.

"I find it a little demeaning to be threatened over magnets."

"You turned your girlfriend into a slash fan!" Howard hissed. "It's bad enough that your mother thinks I'm gay, now Penny is going to be giving me the 'thumbs up on your alternative lifestyle' every time I go near Raj!"

“Leonard, your girlfriend is trying to kill us again,” she tells him solemnly.   “Yeah, I really need to talk to her about that sometime. It was fine at first, but now it’s just weird,” he says wryly, and Penny laughs.

Howard looks over at Sheldon, who is placidly watching them. "Could we have some privacy here?" he snaps. "This is kind of a personal conversation."   "Well, excuse me for having the temerity to be in my own apartment," Sheldon says. "By the way, that was sarcasm," he adds before retreating back to his bedroom.

"I mean, I know the basics. I've watched some porn." Raj considers how damaging the next confession will be and decides it can't be any worse than admitting that he's dating Howard. "I've read some Kirk/McCoy fanfic on the internet."

The look on his face is scathing. "That's a form of cheating. The point of cosplay is to create an accurate costume oneself. Otherwise there's no glory in the adulation." 

“Singer wanted; instrumental proficiency a plus; whistlers need not apply."

(…increased-respiratory-function-increased-heart-rate-trembling-of-the-extremities-blurry-vision-I-must-be-dying-I-MUST-BE-DYING-OH-SWEET-LORD-I’M-DYING-)

Penny doesn't believe in ghosts. Never has. Not until tonight.

And sometimes, she thinks, sometimes he does things because he can, because he hurts and he wants someone else to hurt, too.

His hand were like a brand on the edges and hollows of her hip – as angular and prominent as she would have killed for months and months ago, but now just another sign of loss – and every breath she drew in was ragged.

He feels like he’s interrupting something personal, something that’s only going to remain a special memory for two, and in the back of his mind, he knows there’s no place for him here.

"Don't make me choose between the two of you, Leonard," she says. "You won't like the answer."

Their story starts with an ending.

"Au contraire, Penny, it is the thrill of watching the math play out that excites me."

Sheldon Cooper is... pretty good at stealing TVs.

Six years later, they met again at a train station.

Penny says "I'm not going back" and then regrets it instantly because she's a little bit superstitious. Out here it feels like somebody might be listening. As if saying something aloud to the sky and prairie and the morning sun makes it into prophecy or prayer. Summer on the Nebraska plain has an element of truth to it.

Penny: Well hey there, Spock. Shouldn't you be at the Star Trek panel? / Spock: I was. But then Leonard Nimoy arrived as a special guest on the panel, and it reminded me of you. I have a question for you, if I may.

God, she'd forgotten how to drive. How good it feels to just chew up miles, to move. In California everyone drives everywhere, it's totally stupid, they get in the car and spend fifteen minutes in traffic just to go one block. Now she's got nothing but horizon, and she's going fast so it changes, mountainscreeksbrushsand all thrown together, makes you feel like a goddess to go fast through it. Penny falls in love with Nevada. Nevada's got a lot of horizons, they're rewarding. Up and down one ridge, and then there's another. All silver desert, a brilliant sandbox of jagged rock and dune.

He takes his cocoa and settles into his spot on the couch, one hand around the warm mug, the other pressed flat to the empty seat cushion on his right. He watches a marathon of Doctor Who Christmas specials, regenerating hands and runaway brides, and luxury space cruisers and Cybermen. There are whole stretches where he doesn’t look at the TV at all, but counts the red lights, the blue lights, the yellow lights in the strands hanging along the ceiling. He counts lights and listens to Time Lords and misses Penny.  It’s been a month since she left. She hasn’t been back, but he hung the lights for her anyway.

"Mildew," he pronounces darkly. "Don't leave it in a pile in the laundry room, as you doubtless intended to do. It will create the ideal conditions for fostering the growth of mildew. Now, assuming you haven't changed your laundry habits to ones sane and logical, which is frankly unlikely, you'll have a load comprised of mixed materials i.e. denims and towels and delicate garments all roiled together in an indiscriminate orgy of poor planning, inevitable pilling and ill-advised synthetic fibers."    "I heard 'orgy,'" she offers.

"You taste like toothpaste," she says after they break apart, like it's a surprise. He always does first thing in the morning. Early morning Sheldon is her favorite, hair sticking up in the back and a slight case of stubble. She wants to wake up next to him, hear his voice raspy with sleep.

She tugs him close again, standing on tiptoe so her words will go right into his ear. She wants to laugh and cry at the same time. "Oh, Sheldon, " she says, her face growing warm. "Don't you get it? You're everything. "

Penny gave her a broad smile and reached over to pat Sheldon's knee, asking him, "Do you want to play the elements name game? I've been studying in the shower."