aFireFist
Cameos in The Big Bang Theory
Chapter 10 - Part 4
"Don't get comfortable," Leonard said.
"Too late," Eustace said. "The cereal was pretty good."
Sheldon made a note. Leonard did not ask what it said.
Across the hall, Penny turned on music. Not Rent. Something lower. The wall carried it just enough to prove she was home.
Eustace glanced toward the sound, then away.
Leonard sat down with coffee that had gone lukewarm and the certainty that Saturday's empty night had not been the end of anything. It had only been the part where the lie still fit in a notebook.
Now it had a mouth. Now it had a chair. Now it had Penny's hand on its shoulder.
Sunday afternoon in 4A was a fight about a person who was sitting three feet away.
Sheldon had the notebook open on the coffee table. Eustace was on the couch with his heels on the floor and a look that said he had already heard the speech once. Leonard stood in the kitchen doorway because sitting made it feel like he was part of the production.
"You will not offer Penny unstructured access to your time," Sheldon said. "You will remain in this apartment. You will display fatigue. You will decline additional social invitations."
Eustace scratched his jaw. "She already invited me across the hall. If I refuse like I swallowed a rulebook, she notices."
"Then refuse like a man who is tired."
"I can do tired. I cannot do 'Sheldon wrote my afternoon.'"
Leonard pinched the bridge of his nose. "Both of you stop talking like she's a test audience."
Sheldon turned a page. "She is the only audience that matters. If Eustace drifts off-profile, she will ask questions the original lie cannot absorb."
Eustace looked at Leonard. "Does he always name the problem after himself and then act shocked when people live in it?"
"Yes," Leonard said.
They were still on that when Penny knocked. She had changed into a thin sweater that sat close across her tits and yoga shorts that stopped high on her thighs. Her hair was up. She had a laptop under one arm.
"Tape time," she said. "Leonard. You. Couch. No excuses."
Leonard looked at Sheldon. Sheldon looked at the notebook. Eustace stood up.
Penny's eyes went to him. "You can come if you want. It's twenty minutes of me missing notes in bad lighting. Very healing."
"I shouldn't—"
"You should get out of this apartment for twenty minutes," she said. "You look like you've been graded all morning."
Sheldon opened his mouth. Leonard got there first.
"He can sit in the back and not talk," Leonard said. It came out like a compromise and felt like a mistake.
Penny grinned. "See. Democracy."
Her apartment smelled like coffee and the cheap vanilla candle she kept on the counter. The couch was too small for three people who were trying not to touch. Leonard took one end. Penny took the middle. Eustace took the other end, leaving a gap that disappeared as soon as she sat down and tucked one leg under herself. The shorts rode up. The soft inner skin of her thigh sat in the light from the window.
She hit play.
The camera was someone's phone, held too low, catching the edge of a folding chair and then the stage. Penny came on in the Mimi costume—small top, bare midriff, skirt that moved when she walked. Even on a bad recording the shape of her was obvious. Full tits in the tight top. Bare legs. Ass shifting under the skirt when she crossed the stage.
On the couch, present-day Penny made a noise. "God. I look like I'm fighting the song."
"You look like you're on a stage," Eustace said.
Leonard kept his eyes on the laptop like it might bite him. Onscreen Penny missed a high note and laughed through it. The audience in the workshop was small. Someone clapped early. Leonard felt every second of the Saturday he had spent not being there.
Penny pointed at the screen. "That's the trip. See. His foot, my line, disaster."
"You recovered," Eustace said.
"I stepped on him. That's not recovery. That's revenge."
She shifted closer to the laptop and her thigh pressed against Leonard's knee for a second, then against Eustace's when she turned to talk. She did not seem to notice. Eustace did. He kept his hands on his own legs.
When the song ended she closed the laptop.
"That's it. You suffered. I'm proud of you." She bumped Leonard's shoulder. "You can admit it was rough."
"It was a workshop," Leonard said.
"That's diplomat for rough." She looked at Eustace. "You can say it. You're new. No loyalty program."
Eustace shrugged. "You were in it. That's the part people remember. The pitch is a separate argument."
Penny laughed, surprised. "That's the nicest way anyone's told me I can't sing."
"I didn't say that."
"You put a pillow under it. I heard you."
She got up to grab beers. The shorts pulled tight across her ass when she bent into the fridge. Leonard looked at the wall. Eustace looked at the floor, then not at the floor.
They stayed longer than the tape. Penny asked Eustace if Long Beach had been as ugly as it sounded. He gave her a version that stayed inside Sheldon's fence and still sounded like a person. He talked about motel ice machines and the way family sentences all started the same. He did not invent a priest. He did not invent a diagnosis. He let the pauses do work.
Penny listened with her body turned toward him, one arm along the back of the couch, sweater stretching across her chest. Leonard sat on the other end and felt the evening slide out of his hands.
At some point she said, "You don't have to sleep on their couch if it's making you worse. I mean it about this one."
"I heard you," Eustace said.
Leonard stood. "We should go. Sheldon's going to start a timer."
Penny rolled her eyes. "Tell Sheldon timers don't fix people."
"I'll translate."
They went back across the hall. Sheldon was standing in the living room as if he had been there the entire time.
"Duration exceeded the stated twenty minutes," he said.
"The tape was twenty," Leonard said. "The rest was her talking."
Sheldon's gaze moved to Eustace. "Did you deviate."
"I sat on a couch and watched a phone video," Eustace said. "Revolutionary stuff."
"You will not return there tonight."
Eustace picked up his jacket from the chair. "I'm going to take a walk. That's allowed in most apartments."
He left before Sheldon could assign the walk a route.
Leonard waited until the door shut. "She's going to keep asking him over."
"Then he will decline."
"He won't. You picked a guy who can talk. That's the whole problem."
Sheldon closed the notebook. "The problem is contained as long as the body of the lie remains in this unit."
Leonard did not bother answering.
Eustace came back after dark. He smelled like outside air and the cigarette he had not asked permission to smoke on the landing. He sat on the couch and stared at the dark television.
"She's decent," he said.
Leonard was in the kitchen. "Don't."
"I'm not doing anything. I'm saying she's decent. That's why your lie is going to hurt more than you budgeted for."
Sheldon appeared in the hallway. "You will not discuss the lie with Penny."
"I didn't. I'm discussing it with the people who built it." Eustace leaned his head back. "She offered the couch again when I passed her door. I said maybe tomorrow. So now you have tomorrow to invent a reason I can't sit on furniture that isn't yours."
Leonard set a glass down too hard. "Why did you say maybe."
"Because no would have sounded like Sheldon. And yes would have sounded like I live there. Maybe keeps her from poking the story tonight."
Sheldon considered that and hated that it was competent. "Acceptable. Temporary."
Monday morning Penny knocked with two coffees and only one of them was for Leonard. She handed the second to Eustace without ceremony.
"Walk," she said. "Ten minutes. You look like this room is sitting on your chest."
Eustace looked at Sheldon. Sheldon looked at Leonard. Leonard looked at the ceiling.
"Ten minutes," Leonard said.
They left.
From the window Leonard watched them go down the sidewalk. Penny walked with her coffee in one hand, talking. The morning was cool enough that her nipples showed faintly through the T-shirt. Eustace kept pace with his shoulders down, listening. At the corner she laughed and bumped him with her elbow. He smiled at the pavement.
Sheldon joined Leonard at the window.
"That is not ten minutes of fatigue display," Sheldon said.
"No," Leonard said. "It's not."
They came back in twelve. Penny's cheeks were pink. Eustace had color he had not had at the table.
"He's returning him in one piece," Penny said. "You're welcome." She pointed at Leonard. "You still owe me for missing Saturday. I'm thinking takeout and you not making that face the whole time."
"What face."
"The face you're making right now."
She left. Eustace stood in the doorway with the empty cup.
"She asked if I wanted to come over later and help her run lines she already performed," he said. "That's not a line-running invitation."
Leonard's stomach went tight. "Then don't go."
Eustace nodded once. "I know what it is. I also know if I hide in here she starts asking why the sick cousin can't sit on a couch for an hour. You wanted a person. Persons get invited places."
Sheldon opened the notebook to a fresh page. "We will construct a decline."
"You can construct whatever you want," Eustace said. "I'm telling you what she already did."
He went to the bathroom. The apartment felt smaller.
Leonard sat on the couch and stared at the joint presentation outline still ghosting the whiteboard, two columns that had nothing to do with this week. Across the hall Penny turned music on. Not rehearsal. Something low. The kind of thing you put on when you expected company.
Sheldon wrote containment — evening at the top of the page.
Leonard watched the wall like it might explain itself.
It didn't.
Penny knocked on 4A at seven and did not come in.
"I'm stealing him for an hour," she said when Leonard opened the door. She had changed into a tank that clung to her tits and shorts that barely covered the undersides of her ass. Bare feet. Hair down. "You can have him back after. Or you can come over and sit there like a chaperone. Your choice. I'm not running a prison."
Eustace was already standing. Sheldon had a sentence ready. Leonard looked at Penny's face and knew the decline they had written in the notebook would sound exactly like what it was.
"An hour," Leonard said.
Penny saluted him with two fingers. "An hour."
Her apartment was warmer. The candle was lit. Two beers sat on the coffee table, already opened. She shut the door with her hip and pointed Eustace at the couch.
"Sit. If you stand in the middle of the room you're going to look like you're waiting to be dismissed."
He sat. She dropped onto the cushion next to him close enough that her thigh touched his. The shorts rode up. The soft weight of her tit shifted against the tank when she reached for her beer.
"Sheldon's going to time this," Eustace said.
"Sheldon can time whatever he wants from his own couch." She drank. "You don't have to do the sad-cousin show in here. I'm tired of watching people perform for each other."
He looked at her. "You know I'm a mess on paper."
"I know they talk about you like a file. That's different." She turned toward him, one leg folding under her. The inner skin of her thigh was bare and close. "You listened to my tape without doing the fake-smile thing. That's why you're here. Not because I need a project."
"Leonard thinks that's what this is."
"Leonard thinks a lot of things and then stands in doorways about them." She set the bottle down. "You want to talk about Long Beach, talk. You want to sit here and not talk, also fine. What I don't want is you going back over there to get corrected for sitting like a person."
Eustace let out a breath he had been holding since the morning walk. "The file version is easier. You say fatigue and people stop asking."
"I'm going to keep asking."
"I noticed."
She smiled at that, small. Then she reached out and put her hand on his forearm, thumb against the vein. "You're allowed to be in a room without earning it. That's the whole speech. It's shorter than Sheldon's."
He turned his hand and her fingers slid into his. It was not dramatic. It was just contact. Penny looked at their hands, then at his mouth, then she leaned in and kissed him.
It started careful. It did not stay that way. She made a low sound and opened her mouth. Eustace's other hand found her waist, then the bare skin under the tank. Penny climbed into his lap without breaking the kiss, knees bracketing his hips, full tits pressing into his chest. The tank was thin enough that he felt her nipples tighten through it.
"This is still the hour," she muttered against his mouth.
"Then stop talking about the hour."
She laughed into the next kiss and rolled her hips once, slow. He was already getting hard under her. She felt the thick shape of him through the jeans and made a pleased noise.
"Okay," she said. "That's not subtle."
"You sat on it."
"Yeah. I'm not moving."
{R-18 Scene Eustace x Penny 3229 Full Word Count aFireFist on p.a.t.r.e.o.n.}
That evening Penny came over with takeout and did not mention the bedroom. She asked if Eustace had gotten on the road okay. Leonard said yes. Sheldon supplied a departure time that was close enough to true. She accepted it the way she accepted most things that hurt a little and did not yet have a name.
After she left, Leonard stood in the kitchen with a plate he was not eating.
"She believed all of it," he said.
Sheldon stacked the containers. "Belief was the product."
"She sat with him. She brought food. She—" He stopped again. "You solved a Saturday night and handed her a person who wasn't real. That's not a clean output."
Sheldon considered the counter. "It is a completed output. Clean was never the criterion."
Leonard almost smiled. It did not stick. "Only you."
Across the hall Penny turned the shower on. The wall carried the water and nothing else. In 4A the notebook went back on the shelf. The cousin's bowl was already in the rack. The lie had a beginning, a body, and an exit, and it had still cost more than going to a workshop and clapping.
Leonard put the plate in the sink.
The presentation outline stayed on the board. The apartment kept its balance. Penny kept a version of the week that would not match theirs if anyone ever set the two next to each other.
For now, that was the end of it.
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