Chapter Text
“Night. See you.” Bernadette waved and closed the door behind her. Penny had waved goodbye at her friend and once the door was closed she went to lock it.
She wasn’t doing anything wrong but she also wasn’t ready for the conversation that would need to happen if the rest of the group found out that she and Sheldon were…well, she didn’t actually know what they were.
Ever since they had sex that first time a week ago she had been spending some nights at his place, not every night…just three out of five nights. Today was a Sunday and yeah, just like other times they hadn’t made plans, they just sort of decided to spend the night together.
She even had a little bag with some essentials so she wouldn’t have to go back to her apartment.
Hearing some noise behind her she turned and saw as Sheldon set up his whiteboard with the golden disc pictures and she rolled her eyes. Of course.
“You get one hour Sweetie, then I got you.” She said moving back into the kitchen, touching his back as she walked by.
“Understood.” Sheldon said distractedly and she had to smile and shake her head.
This was her life now and it wasn’t weird, which made this weird at it not being weird. Weird. The word lost all meaning the more she thought about it.
She took her time cleaning up the mess from the takeout and was thankful that they didn’t use actual plates, it made for much easier cleanup. She carefully moved her remaining dumplings into Sheldon’s noodle container, knowing that he wouldn’t care for leftovers.
More for her.
Looking around she tried to find something else to clean but in less than fifteen minutes she was done. Looking back at Sheldon showed that he was doing his weird finger math again as he scribbled on the whiteboard.
Sucking on her teeth she decided she had enough time to shower and freshen up.
Sheldon frowned and scratched his chin. The math didn’t make sense.
He had acknowledged that the language used in these discs was probably beyond their current computing power, but he still wasn’t getting anywhere.
Penny had been the one to set him on his current path…perhaps he needed to take the same approach.
Basics.
Both discs were different from one another. Why?
Almost identical except on the engravings for lines and circles. Could then these represent something dynamic, transient…time? Date? Numbers?
Numbers. A counting system.
If the dots were unchanged then it was logical to expect the message would be the same, the dots represented words?
Fascinating.
“Your hour is up.” She heard as Penny popped the P unnecessarily. Strangely he found it endearing instead of annoying. “Now you’re mine.”
Sheldon turned to ask for more time but the words died in his mouth. Penny was wearing nothing as she stood in the entrance to the hallway.
Without a word he put away the whiteboard.
Sometimes science could wait.
“Penny, are you working on Thursday morning?” Penny looked up from her phone and thought for a moment before shaking her head.
“I only have one visit to make that day, but it’s after noon. Why?” Maybe Raj wasn’t available to drive him to work.
“I ordered some furniture but the earliest available times were only in the morning and I was wondering if you could sign for it and direct the people delivering it?”
“Oh! Of course Honey.”
She hadn’t thought too much about it at the time. Maybe he had ordered a new shelf for all of his Star Trek stuff.
As such she was surprised when the furniture was actually delivered.
“Excuse me? Could you repeat that?” She must have heard wrong.
“Where do you want the bed lady? We were told we also needed to take the old one.”
She hadn’t heard wrong.
“Uh, uh, uh, the…bedroom is there.” She pointed at Sheldon’s bedroom and the guys nodded before moving to take the bed away. She followed after a moment, afraid that they might damage some of Sheldon’s stuff but when she got there everything but the bed was covered in tarp and she swallowed the laugh that tried to escape her.
Of course.
Thankfully these guys were professionals and they quickly disassembled the bed before putting the new one in.
Now, instead of Sheldon’s single bed stood a double.
She stared at it for a long time, unsure of what it meant. She and Sheldon had been…dating? Sleeping together? Fooling around? Whatever. They had been doing stuff for the last three months but they still had to put a label on what they were doing.
Penny vaguely remembered complaining to Sheldon about his bed, how her back was starting to hurt and how sweaty they were getting.
And the Wackadoodle had gone and done this.
Squeeing like a teenager she jumped on the bed and kicked her feet in delight while rubbing her face on the mattress.
Raj stood outside of 4A and he paced the length of the floor.
He let out a breath and checked his phone, it was still way too early. Not having to drive Sheldon home made it harder to coordinate sometimes, he was glad that Penny was the one picking Sheldon up in the afternoons. It had freed a lot of time for him.
That was part of the reason why he was so nervous, he was finally going to tell his friends that he was dating a girl…and another girl, sort of. He cringed, imagining Howard’s reaction.
But that wasn’t all of it, Leonard had also reached out and he wanted to try and rejoin the group. After Sheldon had refused to take him back as a roommate, Leonard had pretty much disappeared. Bernadette and Amy weren’t exactly happy with him so Howard and Zach didn’t try to keep in touch with Leonard. But Raj had, they even managed to get a weekly game of FFXIV going.
Raj liked Leonard, heck, Howard liked Leonard. Yeah, he had messed up big time and Raj had sided fully with Penny but…if anyone knew how horrible it felt to be all alone it was Raj. He didn’t want Leonard to feel the same as he had before meeting Howard.
And it had been more than a year since the breakup…
Yeah, no. Penny was probably going to say no. But he had promised Leonard to at least ask.
“Raj? Everything okay?” He looked up to see Penny leaning against her doorway. He hadn’t even heard her open her door.
“Yeah! Yeah, I just…” He trailed off trying to think of an excuse.
“Oh my god! You’re dating someone!” Penny made that high pitched noise that always made him smile.
“How do you always know?!”
Penny laughed and gave him a quick hug before closing her door and pulling him into 4A.
Sheldon stood in the middle of the room and he was tilting his head from side to side. Raj already knew he did this when he was trying to get a new perspective on an issue that bothered him.
“Stuck again Honey?” Raj watched in shock as Penny sneaked a hand under Sheldon’s shirt to rub at his back as she asked him a question.
“One day I’ll get it.” Sheldon replied distractedly and more importantly, he didn’t freak out.
Raj knew that Penny was the only one that was allowed to somewhat touch Sheldon, but it was usually just leaning her hip against him as she took his order back when she was a waitress, or a tap on the shoulder, or even the not so rare anymore hug. But this, this was something else.
Raj’s eyes widened in shock as Penny nodded and planted a quick kiss on Sheldon’s shoulder before moving to the kitchen and grabbing two bottles of water from the fridge and returning to where he was to hand him one but he couldn’t move.
“C’mon, here you go.” Penny said impatiently and Raj took the bottle. He wanted to ask so many things but stayed quiet.
He had just observed a unicorn and didn’t want to startle it.
“Hold on, let me text Bernadette and make sure she didn’t forget my extra dumplings.”
Raj nodded and sat back, preparing himself to do what he was best at.
Observe the cosmos to try and understand why celestial bodies moved the way they did.
Everyone but Sheldon choked on their drinks or food as Raj revealed the reason behind his hesitation to share his new relationship.
He was dating a woman that was dating another woman.
“Wait, wait, wait. What?” Against every expectation that Penny had, Howard in fact did not have a lecherous smile on his face. “Buddy…You dog you!” Ah, there it was.
Raj explained that it wasn’t like that, that he cared for both Andrea and Liz and was learning a lot about himself. He was saying more but she tuned him out, instead choosing to glance at her…boyfriend? Lover? Partner? Friend with benefits?
And that right there was the issue. She didn’t know what they were.
At first it had been fine, no labels, no pressure. She really had no further plans other than having fun. It was Sheldon after all, Sheldon didn’t do relationships, Sheldon got tired of people.
Sheldon that pulled her in his sleep against his chest. Sheldon that kissed her even when her lips were sticky with the remains of a popsicle. Sheldon that opened his arms as they waited in the checkout line and they went from each having personal space to sharing it together as she stepped up into his chest.
They didn’t text love confessions or sappy messages to one another, but his simple ‘Stay safe’ message made her feel warm and loved. She would send him memes and he would reply in perfect English about how he didn’t get it. She spent an entire afternoon at work creating a GIF of a cat with the words ‘Soft Kitty’ just so she could tease him with it.
On Sunday mornings, the one day that Sheldon allowed himself to stay in bed late, they would lie under the covers, comfortably side by side, her watching Tik Tok or Youtube and him reading a science journal on his phone.
It wasn’t fireworks, no. It was so much more.
“Penny?” Bernadette was snapping her fingers in front of her face. “I asked ‘What do you think?’”
“What? Oh, sorry.” Penny shook her head.
“I’ve warned you about those Tik Tok videos you like so much. They’re affecting your attention span.” Sheldon fired quickly and Penny grinned at him which only made him look back at her warily and with suspicion.
It wasn’t easy.
“Sorry guys, I was thinking about something else.” She admitted.
Sheldon was a pain in the butt.
“More important than what Rajesh just revealed?” Amy raised her eyebrows in shock.
But she could dish out as much as she got and not even Dr Wackadoodle could bring her down.
“Oh Honey, is everything okay at work?” Bernadette reached a hand to grab her knee.
So what if their relationship was unusual. It was worth it.
“Yeah, no, it’s not about work.” Penny thought for a moment before deciding to jump in with both feet. “It’s just…I think I just realized we forgot to tell you guys. Me and Sheldon have been dating for a year.”
Shocked silence fell on the group.
“Were we supposed to tell them? I thought it was obvious.” Sheldon added to the bombshell because of course he did and she couldn’t keep the smile off her face, even if she wanted to.
