Work Text:
Enumeration
Raj wishes Leonard and Priya would split up for the following reasons:
1. It”s starting to get annoying that Penny won”t shut up about how she’s just fine about Leonard being with someone else, when she means the exact opposite.
2. He doesn’t really want nieces or nephews who are short, squinty, and lactose intolerant.
3. He still hasn”t figured out how to break the news to their parents and he’s pretty sure they’re going to kill him for it (although not literally).
4. The sooner Priya moves out, the sooner he and Howard can start having special visits again.
Deliberation
Howard’s been eyeing engagement rings in store windows. He botched the proposal the first time, and he knows his mother’s going to be all kinds of unimpressed if he and Bernadette do get engaged, and he’s still not sure that they’re at the right place in the relationship just yet, but he looks anyway. He can’t afford anything huge but that’s okay because Bernadette would just worry about getting microbes stuck between the claws that hold the stone or something, and there are tasteful small stones.
Besides, with Katee and George offering him advice, he’s sure he’ll get it right.
Recollection
After visiting Penny’s tiny apartment, Wyatt starts calling her maybe once every two weeks, not on a regular basis, but often enough to matter. He’ll stand in the kitchen, twisting the phone cord around his fingers, talking about the home place and who’s got good crops and who’s having calving troubles and how her old school looks with a fresh lick of paint, and imagine her painting her toenails in her little shoebox. He can hear the Midwest creep back into her voice when she responds, and hopes that she still remembers what the cornfields and blue sky look like.
Explanation
Sheldon makes a lot of what other people would deem unnecessary trips up and down the stairs of their apartment building.
Leonard does sit-ups in his room and makes extra trash runs to try and hide the overwhelming quantity of takeout cartons and boxes amongst their neighbors’ overflow.
Howard sneaks out at night and goes for sulky walks around his neighborhood that he doesn’t realize are making him lose weight, and then when he gets home his mother yells at him again for looking too skinny and feeds him something else.
Raj just has a really fast metabolism. Lucky bastard.
Comparison
Penny started out thinking that Amy was just a female Sheldon, and has been pleasantly surprised to discover that she isn’t. Amy’s got what appears to be an actual sense of humor, and she’s not nearly as repressed, and although she has a steadfast aversion to ever trying to be pretty, she’s got her own kind of charm.
Still, when Penny hands her the little jewelry box, and Amy opens it to find the half-heart with “-st -ends” on it, and Penny pulls out her half of the heart, the hug she gets reminds her of the signed napkin incident.
Enumeration II:
Five ways Penny annoys Sheldon:
1. Breaking into “Don’t Stop Believin’” when he’s trying to explain a theorem to her.
2. Switching the lids on his markers.
3. Erasing all the negative signs on his board and replacing them with smiley faces.
4. Sitting in his spot while he’s at his board.
5. Calling him “Dr Wackadoodle” when he complains about any of the above, and then pulling him away from the board and into a kiss that makes him forget what color represents charm quarks because he can’t resist her charm.
(He secretly doesn’t really mind the last one.)
Revelation
First Bernadette had to shower at the lab because of a potential contamination so her hair’s wet and dripping cold water down her back, then there was a huge line at the liquor store, and of course the stupid elevator’s never been fixed.
She opens the door and is about to say hi when she sees that Penny’s head is thrown back and Amy’s hand is up under her skirt. She closes the door again.
Sheldon eventually finds her in the hallway.
“Bernadette? What are you doing?”
Bernadette raises the half-empty bottle. “Thinking you’re right about the knocking thing, Shelley.”
Trichotillomaniation
Stuart fiddles with his hair when he’s nervous or stressed or anxious, which is a lot of the time because he owns his own store and although most of the customers are nice, sane regulars, sometimes there are kids who try to sneak comics out down their pants or break the toys or whatever, plus there’s all the minutiae involved in running a business.
Raj usually tells him off the first time, smacks his hands away the second time, and curls against Stuart so Stuart can play with his hair the third time.
This prevents there being a fourth time.
Exploration
They talk without words, just kissing and touching, engaging in a lazy exploration of new territory, fuelled a little by alcohol, a little by loneliness and a lot by desire. It’s one of those rare times when it’s just the two of them together instead of surrounded by everyone else, and Penny can remember the exact moment when the balance tipped from two friends hanging out to a man and a woman brought together by want, when, without saying anything to give away his intentions, he kissed her.
“Penny,” Raj gasps, and it’s the only word she needs to hear.
Intuition
Penny gives everyone Valentine’s day cards, making them out of red paper and pink rhinestones. Leonard thinks she’s nuts for not only buying into an overhyped holiday but also overdoing it. Bernadette thinks they’re pretty and pins hers to her work blouse for the evening, getting smiles from the patrons. The others respond with varying lukewarm degrees of enthusiasm.
Sheldon brings Chinese food over when she gets home from work, doesn’t complain about eating at her place, and helps her make a dozen Penny Blossoms, singing shanties with her.
How, she wonders, is he the only one who gets it?

lonelywalker
Posted Fri 15 Apr 2011 12:16PM EDT
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Lauren (notalwaysweak)
Posted Fri 15 Apr 2011 08:54PM EDT
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JenniferEsther
Posted Fri 04 May 2012 08:07PM EDT
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