Penny was halfway through toasting a bagel when the knocks came.
Knock-knock-knock.
"Penny?"
Knock-knock-knock.
"Penny?"
Knock-knock-knock.
"Penny?"
She checked the time.
10:06 a.m.
Right on schedule for someone who absolutely did schedule this.
She pulled open the door with a smile. "Doing laundry again?"
Sheldon stood there with a second, significantly fuller basket.
"Leonard has not yet recovered from his… misguided experiment," he said. "The towels still smell faintly of artificial cucumber."
"You know," Penny said, stepping aside, "you can just say you didn't like the smell."
"That would be imprecise. I detest the smell."
"Better."
Sheldon moved through the apartment with the stiff, habitual grace of someone cataloging the entire environment as he walked. Penny could practically see him ticking off items on an internal cleanliness checklist.
She busied herself with the toaster while he loaded the dryer.
"You're putting too many items in," he called from the nook. "Overcrowding impedes airflow and reduces drying efficiency."
Penny smiled as she noticed Sheldon not only taking out her items from the drier but also folding them. Thank goodness it wasn't a delicates cycle.
Penny laughed. "Thank you Sheldon."
"I thought it best to inform you for future reference," he said. "I've noticed your approach to household appliances is—"
"Don't say 'chaotic.'"
He paused. "…unstructured."
She snorted. "That's just the polite word for 'chaotic.'"
"It's the accurate word," he corrected.
She let him have that one.
He looked pleased—subtly—which meant he'd been waiting for a chance to deliver that line.
When he emerged from the laundry nook, Penny was back on the floor with her sketchbook open. Not to the Valkyrie page—she kept that safe—but a new one. Rough thumbnails for character designs.
Sheldon approached with the same stealthy-not-stealthy curiosity he always pretended he didn't have.
"What are those?"
"Supporting characters," Penny said. "Gotta build the cast if I want this graphic novel to work."
He squinted, leaning just close enough to read the names.
"'Type-S Protocol Unit'? Why is this one holding a checklist?" he asked suspiciously.
Penny hid a grin. "Oh, just a little guy I'm working on."
Sheldon frowned at the page.
"This character appears highly structured. Predictable. Logical."
"Mhm."
"And… admirably well-prepared."
"Mhm."
He studied her, eyes narrowing.
"…Did you base him on me?"
"Noooo," she said, absolutely having based the character on him.
Sheldon lifted the sketchbook an inch to read the note under the drawing.
'TYPE-S: automated organization subroutine.
Function: enforce order in chaotic environments.'
His eyebrows shot up.
"Penny."
"What? He's cute!"
"He is pedantic," Sheldon corrected.
"So… cute."
He looked at the sketch again. Longer this time.
And Penny caught it—
something like quiet pride, buried under five layers of denial.
"Your line work is unusually precise for a hobbyist," he said. "You maintain consistent form across iterations. Most people lack the attention span for that."
She blinked. That wasn't just a compliment.
That was Sheldon-level praise: factual, unprompted, and sincere.
Her heart thumped once.
The System flickered faintly in her peripheral vision:
[EMOTIONAL RESONANCE SPIKE DETECTED
→ Ignored by TARGET due to immunity parameter.]
Yeah, yeah. She knew.
Her chest tightened anyway.
She swallowed. "Thanks, sweetie. Means a lot."
"Please refrain from endearments," he said automatically—but his ears turned pink.
"Of course, Type-S," she teased.
"Penny."
"Sorry."
(Not sorry.)
He hovered, hands twitching at his sides like he wanted to keep analyzing the art but didn't know the protocol for 'hanging out.'
She broke the tension for him.
"You can sit, you know. I don't bite." Well unless he wanted her to, but that was a long, long time in the future she suspected.
He considered.
Then lowered himself carefully onto the far edge of the couch—exactly three and a half feet away, the same distance he always seemed to default to around her.
She kept sketching.
He kept pretending not to watch.
They bantered lightly—about shading consistency, about the optimal number of dryer sheets (Sheldon: 1 precisely; Penny: however many smell good), about the ethics of naming a character after someone without consent.
"You're overthinking it," she said.
"I never overthink," he said.
"You always overthink."
"That is a common misconception people have when they lack my processing speed."
She barked a laugh, without a hint of sarcasm. "God, you're fun."
He looked up, startled.
People didn't usually call Sheldon fun.
He didn't know how to react. So he blinked twice, adjusted his metaphorical social calibration, and returned to observing the sketchbook as if the compliment hadn't short-circuited him a bit.
The dryer hummed in the background—warm, steady, comforting.
A strange peace settled into the room.
Penny sketched.
Sheldon watched.
The world didn't break.
When the dryer buzzed, Sheldon stood abruptly.
"I should collect my clothes," he said. "Thank you for the… floor time."
"You can call it hanging out."
"I could," he said cautiously, "but that would imply that this activity is likely to repeat with some regularity."
"It might," Penny said, smiling.
He hesitated for a fraction of a second.
"…We'll see."
And he left—dryer-warm towels folded with precise edges, ritual intact.
Penny closed her sketchbook, hugging it to her chest.
"Okay," she whispered to the empty apartment. "Still not broken. Good."
But her heart was lighter.
And her new character, Type-S, had never looked better.