Title: The Thermal Comfort Economization
Author: htbthomas
Fandom: The Big Bang Theory
Pairing: Penny/Sheldon
Prompt: webcam
Rating: R
Word Count: 969 words
Beta: damalur

She doesn’t know how it started. This little ritual he and she developed. Do the other guys know? She doubts it, but Sheldon is surprisingly frank sometimes.

Penny lifts her laptop lid in preparation. She’s nervous, and a little bit excited, the way she always is. Somehow Raj was able to explain how to set up Skype over email (she didn’t even know she had a built-in webcam in her laptop) and so they all have a little chat-fest at least once a week. She misses them, in all their teddy-bear-like, non-talkative, pervy, wack-a-doodle glory.

Sheldon always goes last. The other guys go to bed earlier, complaining that Sheldon is working them too hard, but he cites something like, “My circadian rhythms have adjusted to the length of daylight here,” and scoffs at the blackout curtains on the windows of the bunk room.

Then one day, about a month into the boys’ North Pole expedition, she’s joking with Sheldon. “You guys must have to wear about fifty layers, right? Just looking at you, I’m sweating.” Can she help it if she can’t afford to run the A/C right now? A trickle of sweat escapes her hair and runs down her neck, proving her point.

“Don’t be silly, Penny. The inside temperature of our outpost is a quite pleasant sixty degrees. I am wearing specially-treated fabric which adjusts according to the current conditions in my environment, as well as my body temperature...”

She makes a blah-blah-blah motion with her fingers, but he appears to be focused on explaining things like fiber type and thread count and chemical coating. “Yeah, whatever,” she says, cutting him off. “I just said you look hot.”

She stops, biting her lip at the unintentional double meaning.

He pauses for a moment, considering, and then takes off into another story from their week. “Did Koothrappali mention the hilarious mistake he made in calibrating the...”

She tunes him out again, still thinking about her slip of the tongue. Leonard would probably say something about it being ‘Freudian’ or whatever (she’s not sure how she’s picking up all this brainy terminology... osmosis? Oops, there it is again). But she wonders if maybe there is something to it.

She thinks for a moment. She is spending more minutes chatting with Sheldon than with any of the other boys. And it’s not just because Sheldon uses twice as many words to say anything.

Does she really think he’s ‘hot’?

Just then, he pauses to take a sip from his teacup, and she notices the way his long fingers curl around the handle, the way his Adam’s apple moves as he swallows...

She really is getting hot, and the A/C being off has nothing to do with it this time.

She starts to fan herself, to get some air moving. She can feel her tank top sticking to her back now. Pretty soon it’s going to be soaked, and she’s going to have to change her top before bed.

Sheldon actually notices, breaking from his topic, which has now moved on to the dynamics of game play in close quarters (she thinks, it’s hard to concentrate on anything but the heat and the way his lips move). “Is there something wrong, Penny? You seem... discomfited.”

She pulls on one of the straps of her tank top. “Yeah, I’m just...” she begins, but he’s looking at her with this blend of curiosity and friendly concern that he seems to save only for her, and she decides to test a thought. “I’m just hot.”

“Well, of course you are, Penny, you did say that you were trying to save electricity. Although I will again stress that I--”

“No, I mean, I’m... hot.”

He looks at her with a touch of exasperation. “I fail to see how repeating your condition will improve it in the slightest.”

“Sheldon.” She purposely takes the strap she’s holding and slides it down her shoulder. “Not that kind of hot.”

“Oh.” His eyes widen and he swallows. “I see.”

“Just talking to you, seeing you like that... is making me feel this way.” She pushes the other strap down, sees his eyes follow the motion there on the screen. “What about you?”

“It is not...” He moves his hand up to pull at his collar. “...unpleasant.”

So she is not crazy to think there is something more building between them. If she’d been wrong, she would have pretended it was all a joke, a ‘classic prank.’ But now there’s no turning back.

She looks him in his pixilated eye, lifting the hem of her shirt to just below her breasts. “Do you want to see more?”

He nods. “But wait.” Suddenly the scene behind him shifts -- he has turned himself 180 degrees. “Continue.”

She smiles at the way he has obviously moved the screen to avoid an accidental peep show. And she’s glad. This is just for him.

Slowly, she peels the sweaty tank from over her breasts, and they fall free, bouncing slightly. The air of the room feels so much better than the sticky cotton does.

Sheldon is still, like a statue. She wishes for a moment that she knew what he was thinking, then laughs to herself. Sheldon usually tells everyone he meets (and the whole Twitterverse for that matter) exactly what he is thinking. To reduce him to silence and a few halting words is... empowering.

“What would you do if I... did this?” She cups the side of one of her breasts, gently sliding her fingers underneath to lift it.

“I would... wish to do it myself.”

There’s a rush of blood to her pelvis. “Then we’ll have to settle for this...”

By the end of the summer, she calculates that she’s saved a couple hundred dollars in electricity bills.