AN: Hmm, it appears I've got lots on my brain today.. Trying to clear out the sweet stuff to find some serious spice I guess! LOL. I have not forsaken my other fics, I promise!
Penny stared down at the fortune cookie in her hand.
"Ask, and you will receive"
If only it were that easy, she thought. She'd asked for acting jobs and got few. Asked for a pay increase and got none. Hell, she'd asked Leonard to bring her a bear claw that one time and he'd totally forgotten.
The only person who ever did what she asked was Sheldon.
Come to think of it, he'd pretty much always done whatever she asked him to. She hadn't asked for much, so maybe that was something to do with it, and she'd only asked when she really needed something.
But the more she thought about it, the more she realized that Sheldon just generally, did what he was asked. He might grumble and complain, but it always got done, when nobody was paying attention.
She tilted her head and read the fortune cookie again. How far would he go?
As if on cue, he rapped on the door.
She waited till the second knock before getting up off the couch, so that she didn't reach the door till the third was completed.
"Hey Sheldon."
"Can I come in?" He blurted out.
"Uh, yeah, sure, what's up?" She asked as she let him in and shut the door behind him, locking it. She wasn't sure if she was locking others out or locking him in, but since both ideas appealed she didn't focus on it too much.
"Leonard is having an argument with his mother." Sheldon sighed, taking a seat on her couch and straightening the pile of magazines on the table in front of him. Penny was tempted to ask him to clean her apartment, just to see what he would do, but couldn't bring herself to use his nature in that way.
"So you are escaping?" She sat beside him and handed him the remote. There was nothing she wanted to watch on TV tonight anyways so she might as well let him pick the channel.
"You have become my refuge." Was his cryptic response.
"Yay me!"
"Sarcasm?"
"Half."
He shrugged. "Alright. I have been correct 27.5 times out of the last 50 then."
She smiled at him. "You're improving."
He nodded with a smirk, which turned into a frown when he realized that there was nothing on the tv menu he wished to watch.
All the movies he liked were over at his place, with Leonard, and his argument.
He looked at Penny with a faintly puzzled look on his face. "There's nothing on. What should we do?"
"I know a game." Penny said slowly, her eyes on the fortune still on the coffee table. "It's a combination of truth or dare."
Sheldon narrowed his eyes. "I don't like dares."
"It's not that kind of dare. It's more that you have to tell the truth." She looked up at him. She couldn't even understand why she was doing this, except that, well, she'd always wanted to know.
Sheldon looked away for a moment and then nodded. "I like truths."
"Ok, I'll go first." She thought for a second, and decided to start off easy. "Why do you always get cheese on everything you order by takeout?"
There was a sudden gleam in Sheldon's eyes. He'd wanted so long for someone to ask that... "So that Leonard can't eat the leftovers in the middle of the night." He said quietly.
Penny burst out laughing. "What a great idea! I should have thought of that." She looked back on all the times she'd ordered dairy free food so that Leonard could eat it, only to find no leftovers the next morning when she was starving and looking forward to it.
Sheldon smiled. So far he was liking this game. "My turn. Why did you break up with Leonard?"
"I don't love him." She responded instantly. "Why did you never approve of me and Leonard as a couple?"
"Leonard and I." He corrected her. "Because you deserve better."
"Oh." She blinked. Unexpected, but she couldn't argue it, because sometimes Leonard really was an ass, that whole physic thing. "What do you think of Physics?"
He frowned. "Hookum. However, I will not deny that there may be SOME individuals, who may posses and use telepathic abilities to read your mind or acute observation skills which they then apply to a formula which then may be used to accurately predict an event in the future, though I highly stress the unlikelihood of this." He replied in a rush, so that she couldn't interrupt him.
"Why.." She started, but then he interrupted her.
"I believe it's my turn."
She rolled her eyes.
"How much of my work do you understand?" He watched her carefully.
"A little bit." She admitted. "I don't know how or why, but I do know what you do. I googled it."
He smirked. "I thought so."
"Ok, NOW, why do you think it's highly unlikely?" She asked, referring to his last answer.
"Because it were possible then surely I would be able to do it."
She had to concede on that one.
"Why do you have one-night stands?" He wondered.
She bit her lip. The questions had suddenly got a lot harder. "Because," She paused. She'd gone into this game intending to tell the truth, so she would. "Because I don't like being alone sometimes."
He pursed his lips. He liked being alone, except when he was sick, but then, he had a roommate. Penny didn't.
"Are you straight or not?" Penny asked.
He raised an eyebrow. "Straight." He wanted to ask why, but realized that would be taken as his question, and he had another that was at the moment, more pressing. "Why do you not merely have a 'friend with benefits' instead of one night stands?" He returned.
"Because I can't stay emotionally uninvolved."
"Oh." He nodded.
She took a deep breath. If he was going to continue asking questions about her sex life, she was going to ask some about his. "At what age did you loose your virginity?"
His lips twitched slightly. "I was seventeen."
She grinned. She just knew he hadn't been a virgin. Oh, she'd bet that he didn't have a lot of experience, but his assertions that it was too messy had always made her believe that he'd done it, at least once, cause she'd watched porn too and it never looked messy.
"How old were you?" He countered.
"Fourteen." She muttered. "When was the last time you had sex?"
"When I was eighteen." He flexed the fingers on his right hand unconsciously. "How old was the boyfriend you lost your virginity to?"
Penny pursed her lips. "Same age as you were when I was fourteen."
"Where I'm from that's frowned on." He said crossly.
Penny half smirked. "Where I'm from too.. My brother beat the heck outta him." She'd never had such an open conversation as this, funny that it was with Sheldon. Not that it being Sheldon was odd, they had discussions all the time, just that for some reason it was centred around sex, and sex and Sheldon wern't something most people would put in the same sentence once he'd opened his mouth and started talking, unless you were Penny. She frowned suddenly, as the thought occurred to her that many grad students also seemed to agree with her. "How do you feel about kissing?"
He looked startled. "I don't know. I've never considered it beyond the transmission of germs and saliva." He licked his lips suddenly. "Do you enjoy kissing?"
"Yes." Penny smiled slightly. "I do." She shifted on the couch slightly. She really wanted to kiss him. Once again she remembered the fortune. "Sheldon," She leaned forward towards him. "May I kiss you?"
He visibly swallowed. "No."
She winced and looked away. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked."
"Penny?" He interrupted her.
When she looked up, he was closer to her than he had been before, and his eyes were vary serious. "Yes?" She whispered.
"May I kiss YOU?"
Her eyes widened, and she nodded, wordless.
He leant in slowly, one hand on her face holding her still, the other on her arm, holding himself steady. He didn't look nervous, he looked as though he was trying to memorize the whole scene, so he could replay it back to himself later. As he neared, Penny watched him, until his lips grazed hers, and then her eyelashes fluttered shut, so she could just feel.
His kiss was gentle but thorough, soft and firm at the same time.
It was possibly one of the best kisses she'd ever gotten.
When he pulled back, she blinked at him, breathlessly. "Can you do that again?"
He nodded, and did as she'd asked.
Somehow, she ended up half underneath him on the couch, with her hands up his shirt, and one of his hands firmly planted on her rear.
"Is this an experiment, Penny?" he whispered into her neck.
She shook her head and whispered back, "No."
She felt his lips touch her neck in a gentle kiss. "Are you ok with this?" She asked. She didn't want to ask it, she didn't want to hear if it wasn't, ever fibre in her wanted this, it felt so right, HE felt so right.
He chuckled, and it was a real one, not just that breathy sound he made sometimes. "I've been waiting a long time for this I think, so yes."
As his words sunk in, she realized that he had, in fact, been biding his time, waiting for an opportunity. All those little signs that she'd thought she'd seen had really been there. He'd just been waiting for her to catch up, like he always did.
And she had, just just like always.
"Thank you for waiting."
His mouth was doing things to her skin that felt entirely too good. "May I proceed?"
"Yes. You definitely may."
It was a good thing it was the weekend, they both would have been late for work the next morning otherwise. Sheldon, after discovering that his hypothesis was correct, sex with Penny WAS in fact more enjoyable than his previous two sorties into that area of human contact had been, had decided he should make up for lost time.
Penny didn't mind one bit.
The connection they had, the one that made fighting with each other enthralling and fighting together addictive, made being together something out of this world, something that Penny had enough experience to know was really rare, and something to be treasured.
And so it was...