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.

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

"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.)

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.

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.

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.

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

"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?”

'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.

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.

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."

“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.

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.

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."

If someone asked her to explain the events leading up to their first night together, she wouldn't be able to string together a coherent story if she were offered a million dollars and the lead in the next Steven Spielberg film.

Pay attention, because I am only going to do this once.

Then, when she said, "Will you just lay here with me?" he didn't say anything. But when she tugged on his shirt sleeve, he maneuvered behind her, all awkward limbs and lack of grace, right into the empty spot on the bed.

"So you and Sheldon, huh?" Damn him. "So you and Howard, huh?"

From behind him, Raj called, "What about mangoes?"   Sheldon's jaw set and he shook his head sharply. "Definitely not, and not while I'm still alive."

"I needed to do it. Just in case. If something goes wrong again, I needed to kiss you one more time."

It's nothing like a dream, everything seems oversaturated and heavy and real. She feels awake. She is awake. She's in bed, curled on her side, the plaid comforter pulled up to her neck, sliding bare legs back and forth across the cool sheets.

And the days pass like receding waves, rolling over her, dragging her each hour a little farther from the shore.

"'Homemade' is not a subspecies of pie. 'Homemade' is not a part of pie taxonomy."   "It's cherry," Penny bites out. "Eat. A. Friggin.' Piece."

"You're too pretty, and warm, and friendly, and you smell like Meemaw's cookies, and you don't wear enough clothing, and Leonard thinks he's been in love with you all this time, and you make me want to know what feelings are, and you can't know comics."

His hand is on her back and he's steering her gently towards the door. A sudden, stray thought bubbles up: is this a date? When did this become a date? And then Sheldon leans in just enough so she can feel the pressure of his chest against her arm, and she swears on all that is holy that he smells her hair. Yep, it's a date. Fantastic.

“That happened,” she observed, a safe two feet away from him.   This statement seemed to have brought him back to his senses. “Well of course it happened.”

e)THAT, my friend, is Dr. Sheldon Cooper of CalTech University. If you like what you see, welcome to the CooperLaine fandom, bb.

Penny corded Sheldon’s fingers between her fingers, and said, “Tell me about the big bang.”

“I ought to warn you he’s in his room. And Shelly does not like other people in his room.”    This doesn’t faze her in the slightest. “He’ll make an exception.”

She considers this for a moment, then points to the screen, “So that’s one of the Final Five?”   He looks positively outraged by that notion. “No, that’s an eight.”

Tuesday and Saturday nights are now scheduled for time with you, so as not to upset the group dynamic.

At some point she becomes Sheldon’s best friend.

“I believe he brought up the time we cleaned your apartment and you in turn divested us of our key. However, I argued that since you had apparently already invaded our apartment while we were gone, I might as well return the favor.”

It always ended with Stockholm; they were the only places she felt merited a star, tag, and link description.