After practically rolling herself out of her seat, Penny locked the car up manually once the final door was shut, and shuffled her way over to the apartment entrance with Sheldon while he went about reinstating his mandate—But wait. Did he just say the words 'I appreciate'? Penny stopped in her tracks for a very brief moment to ponder over this with the most bewildered look on her face; but, after establishing that it was probably just her tired mind playing tricks on her, she proceeded onward, shaking off that extremely unlikely possibility.

"Yeah, yeah... the, uh... seven... five... three... eight... sharp... yeah... got it..." Her words were slurred—one hand tending to her forehead while the other flapped around in an attempt to express what she was trying to say through body language, for her speech was so obviously incapable.

Just as she was about to head through the entrance door that Sheldon so kindly held open for her, however, she happened to lose her footing by just a little bit, causing her body to sway and wobble clumsily towards Sheldon.

"... OK, I really need to lie down," Penny told herself against Sheldon's chest before patting it and then continuing on through the doorway as if this kind of behaviour seemed second nature to her.

"Penny, that didn't sound very certain. I need to be at work at 8:30, that means we need to leave at 8:00 sharp." Sheldon responded, looking down at his neighbor with increasing amounts of concern, she was walking unsteadily and her mannerisms displayed some kind of distress. "Do you require some kind of -" Sheldon was cut off by the woman falling into his chest.

Before he could get out his normal phrase of disgust about the personal contact, and invasion of his space Penny had righted herself and has gone inside the building. He followed her with brisk steps, rounding on the steps immediately. As he began to ascend he commented to her, "that was inappropriate. You know I dislike being touched." He then added, "please rest before you take me to work tomorrow." She apparently needed to rest to be at her best functioning.

Stopping just as her foot landed on the first step of the staircase, Penny looked up to glare at the reprehensive man blocking her way. Did he not realize that it was he who forced her out in her condition in the first place? For a genius, he really wasn't very good at rationalizing.

Using the handrail as a support, Penny sighed and shook her head. "I swear to God, Sheldon..." she slurred, eyes blinking furiously. "One of these days, when you aren't looking, I'm going to slip something very strong into one of your drinks... Only then will you appreciate the extent of the things I do for you." With that said, she proceeded in trudging up the stairs as quickly as her body would allow, all the while doing her best to escape Sheldon.

Sheldon shook his head, unsurprised by the woman's threatening comment. "I see, you are suffer the aftermath of an overindulgence in alcohol." He said, striding up to the first landing while he spoke, "then you do not have my sympathy. A man made malady if there ever was one." Sheldon added, nearly tutting at his neighbor's not inconsiderable indiscretions. "Also, I am going to take your threat of poisoning me as friendly ribbing."

Walking toward the second flight of steps Sheldon inclined his head toward his neighbor, "and I'd recommend that you do not consume alcohol during the week anymore. It might impair your ability to drive me to work." He said, taking in the woman's disheveled state. "Unfortunately for you, you've used up all your mistakes on the very first day of our endeavor."

"Mista—Oh, please!" Penny groaned, throwing her hands out in front of her. "Sheldon, if this is just going to be another 'strike' episode, then lest I remind you who won the last time... and by what means." Despite the seriousness etched in her tone, for the most part her words were merely empty threats. She went to that extreme once in the past, but that was only because he truly deserved it; whereas, at this moment, his behaviour was no variation to the norm—it was simply her whose immune system to Sheldon was temporarily impeded.

Sheldon momentarily paused on the steps, thrown back years to a time when he had been bested by Penny. Bested by means of his own Mother. "You didn't win, you cheated." He murmured as he regained his forward motion, moving past the second landing. "And no, I'm not going to give you a strike. Systems of Justice are sustained by the fear subjects have of punishment from their rulers." Sheldon said, casting a glance at the rebellious blond, "you are incapable of such fear. I must accept that, however it may rankle me." Though he wouldn't stop trying to modify her behavior, he'd just have to come up with a different means than those he applied to his other friend/subjects.

Penny had to replay Sheldon's words in her head a few times before actually comprehending what he was saying, but when she did she shook her head and sighed. "Sheldon, sweetie, there's a difference between fear and pity... perhaps you'll understand it someday."—Or not, she added mentally, while her face faked a smile.

By that time, they had just made their way onto the fourth floor, at which point Penny wasted no time in rushing over to her apartment and fumbling around in her pockets for her keys. After finding them and inserting the correct one into the door's keyhole, she presented a final word of warning to the crazy man across the hall, "Oh, and you know how you were just talking about rules and all that? Well, I'm imparting a new rule right now—Do. Not. Bother. Me. For. The. Rest. Of. Today." With that said, she flung open her door and, just before entering, glanced over her shoulder at the physicist. "I still won." Leaving him with a shrewd look in her eyes, she shut the door, tossed her coat carelessly onto the floor, and then collapsed like dead weight onto her sofa.

"Hmph." Was Sheldon's only reply to his neighbor as she quickly exited. She hadn't one, she had cheated. He'd always maintain that. He paused for a moment outside of his door to tweet from his phone "@QueenP: Cheating isn't winning."

Sheldon then unlocked his apartment door and went inside, closing the door behind him. He placed his keys in the key bowl by the door and went over to his email to check his correspondence. After a few short sentences to his Mother, he sat down in front of the television to re-watch Firefly, with commentary.

----------

((Sorry, I know that was tres lame, I couldn't think of anything, but I also couldn't keep not posting .... -__- my b))

Not even ten seconds after collapsing onto her blue sofa, Penny heard the little vibrating buzz against the wooden floor, emanating from the spot where she tossed her coat. Groaning face-down into the pillow her head was drowned in, she waited an additional ten seconds before slowly rolling her way off the couch and crawling across the floor toward the strewn article of clothing.

After fumbling around for the pocket that contained her phone, once found, she expected to see just a simple text but was surprised to see that the message had actually come from Twitter. Feeling slightly apprehensive as she clicked into the app, after reading the addressed tweet she nearly got up to go throw her phone at her neighbour. Deciding that she was still much too tired to do so, she merely RTed, "@Sheldor: oh ya? i dont hear u sayin that about kirk!" and then crawled back over to her couch, praying for some peace.

Just as Sheldon was sitting down to watch Firefly his phone alerted him to a message. He hoped that it would be a retweet of text from Penny, stating that she was incorrect, and offering her apologies. If, however, past history was any indicator, it was going to be a snarky comment referencing pop culture that he didn't understand. Heaving a slight sigh at the clap trap that likely awaited him, he flicked open his phone, and entered into the twitter app on his phone.

"@Sheldor: oh ya? i dont hear u sayin that about kirk!"

Sheldon looked down at his phone in disbelief, allowing his face to twitch slightly. Kirk. She was going to throw the Kobayashi Maru incident back at him! He would not stand for this! Sheldon shook his head and carefully typed back his reply.

"@QueenP: Don't throw you're semi-canonical knowledge back at me if it was only gleaned from a modern day retelling of a classic story. I do not believe you have seen Wrath of Khan. You lose again."

Pleased with his response, Sheldon returned his phone to his pocket after hitting send. He then flicked on Firefly and allowed himself to sink into the world of Mal and his crew.

As Penny's eyes were just starting to close again, another vibration alert from her phone startled her, making her whole body jump. After dropping her phone on the floor because of it, she picked it back up and jabbed her finger at the screen's buttons, clearly frustrated with the fact that Sheldon wouldn't let it go.

Once having read Sheldon's new retweet, Penny blew a raspberry, and instantly started on her retweet back to him.

"@Sheldor: facts r facts, moonpie. ...OOPS! r we still talkng over the internet??? aww..... maybe u should pick a better methed of LOOSING next time!!!!!!!!! lol!" Finishing with one hard bash on the 'Tweet' button, Penny threw her phone onto the coffee table and flopped face-forward back into her pillow.

Hearing another ding, notifying him that he'd received a message, Sheldon calmly paused his show and set the remote down. He then reached into his pocket and clicked into his twitter app.

Oh no.

With hands shaking in anger and a face contoured in rage Sheldon replied to Penny's comment. "@QueenP: AN INDIVIDUAL THAT CANNOT UTILIZE PROPER GRAMMAR WOULD NEVER BEST ME!!! AND YOU ARE FORBIDDEN TO USE THAT NAME!"

((Irony: Sheldon spelled 'utilize' wrong. Bahahaha))

---

This time, her phone hardly buzzed for a second before her hand reached out to swipe the phone back from the table. Propping herself up on her elbows, her fingers tapped furiously against the buttons, leading her into the page of updated tweets.

Penny released a cheeky snort upon reading his reaction—he was so cute when he got mad.

"@Sheldor: ooo, bite me... ickle shelly mooooonpieeee~ MOONPIE MOONPIE MOONPIE" Smirking deviously to herself, she could just imagine him twitching like a malfunctioning robot on his couch spot.

Sheldon hadn't even bothered to restart his DVD, he only waited patiently for Penny's reply. As such he was sitting patiently with his fingers at the ready when his phone buzzed again. Penny's response rocketed him from anger to rage. Those emotions propelled him from his seat and to his front door. He was through the front door and to Penny's door in a matter of seconds.

After three knocks and three "'Penny!" 's repeated thrice. Sheldon planted his feet and waited for Penny to answer the door with his arms crossed across his chests.

It wasn't until Penny waited for and failed to receive a response via cellphone, followed by the abrupt banging at her door, that she realized she had gone a tad too far. It was all fun and games until she remembered that the man she was harassing lived but ten metres from her.

Frowning, as she was really not in the mood for a direct confrontation, she slowly rolled herself off the couch and crossed the space to the doorway. Setting her hand on the handle, she reluctantly opened the door, revealing the fuming man just outside it.

Glaring up at him, Penny's eyes narrowed. "Well, well... Sheldon's breaking a rule. How are you going to live with yourself after this?" she asked, eyebrows raised expectantly.

"I never sanctioned that rule, or swore to uphold it in a friend of neighbor agreement." Sheldon responded shortly, looking down at Penny as much as he could. When near her, he was never quite as tall as he wanted to be. "As such there was no indication that I would abide by said rule." Sheldon finished, swiveling his head slightly in a disoriented gesture. He had come over her with a very small plan, and she had quickly derailed it. He needed to regain control of the situation.

"Penny. You must not call me Moon Pie. Only my MeeMaw calls me that." He said, refocusing on Penny and trying to divert the conversation in the direction that he had originally desired. "And I believe we have established that you are not my MeeMaw."

"Oh, okay, hold on a minute," Penny said as she shifted a little to the side to lean against the door. Bringing her index finger to her lips, she feigned an expression of deep thought.

"Let's see now... you know, I don't recall 'sanctioning'"—she raised and hooked her fingers into imitation quotation marks—"any rule that states I am forbidden from calling you Moonpie," she mentioned, creasing her brows and unfocusing her eyes as if trying so hard to remember. Defeated by her own false lack of memory, she looked back up at Sheldon with a wry smile. "Therefore... I believe I have every right to call you whatever I want... Moonpie," she said, crossing her arms over her chest as she slowly enunciated every single letter in the name.

Sheldon's entire body was taut with anger, "Penny," He began, forcing out the words. "Do not call me that." At this point he began to search his mind for knowledge he had of Penny that might irk her to the extent that she irked him. He cast his mind back to the years of friendship and finally snagged upon something that was hopefully as damning as 'moon pie'.

"Maybe you're right Penny." Sheldon said, in a much calmer tone, "there is a first time for everything." He let a huge smile slip across his features. Not a pleasant smile, but a malicious smile that a victor gave a competitor they had just bested. "Isn't that right? Slugger?"

As if having just been slapped in the face, Penny's arms dropped and her face twisted into a look of shock and rage. Mouth hanging slightly open, her eyes did not leave Sheldon for a single moment, as his comment left her temporarily dumbstruck.

"Oh, that—that—you—" Penny was having a hard time finding her voice. Between her temper rising from Sheldon's comeback and the miserable memories suddenly flooding into her brain, her mouth was left dry. From the intensity of her breathing alone, someone would think she was about to have an anxiety attack. "You—" Managing to lift a tense finger, she pointed it right at Sheldon's face. "You're mean." And that's all her bright, tomato-coloured face could utter before turning her back on him and slamming the door.

After that, Penny couldn't even think about sleeping. She needed to cool down. So, naturally, as she so often did when under emotional distress, she headed straight to her kitchen where she yanked open her freezer door and extracted her therapeutic tub of vanilla ice cream. Grabbing a spoon from the nearby cupboard, she scooped it into the frozen dessert and then devoured the large spoonful as if it was the last thing she'd ever eat. All the while, tears were pulling at the corners of her eyes as thoughts of her childhood flashed before her. She wondered how Sheldon even found out about that... then, realizing Leonard probably told him, she wolfed down another huge dollop of ice cream.

Sheldon knew that he had delivered the fatal blow when she was reduced to stammering and slammed the door in his face. "Sheldon 1, Penny 0." He muttered to himself, his triumphant smile stretched across his face. With his victory happily on his mind Sheldon walked back over to his apartment and swung the door open. Beverly had long ago spilled the beans to him in terms of Penny's psychological profile. He had never thought that it would become so useful to him.

Sheldon returned to his apartment and sat down gingerly in his favorite spot. He'd only been gone for a matter of minutes, the title screen from Firefly still stared back at him from the TV. He un-paused the show and the opening commenced. Life was good for Dr. Sheldon Cooper. Life was good.

"That's right, Sheldon... you just go ahead and mess with your only source of Sheldon-approved transportation. We'll see how that turns out for you tomorrow," Penny mumbled bitterly to herself, one hand flicking through television channels while the other loaded her mouth with another spoonful of ice cream.

Settling on a TV show she wasn't even paying attention to, Penny tossed the remote aside and adjusted herself so that she was laying on her back with her head propped up on a pillow and her tub of ice cream perched on top of her stomach. Time passed like that for about five minutes, after which point her tired subconscious decided to take over and slowly began leading her into a deep sleep.

---

((Feel free to fast forward, unless you have any ideas you'd still like to execute!))

When Sheldon awoke in the morning, he was pleased that it was a new day - a fresh start after the utter disaster that was yesterday. With that in mind he went about his daily schedule without fail, running neither behind nor ahead. Nothing went wrong at all, his bathroom time was unhindered. He dressed and ate breakfast without incident. He collected his work without so much as a paper cut. Even the building was quiet with the gentle hum of people getting ready for the day, Sheldon didn't have so much as a loud footfall to complain about. In a rare pleasant mood Sheldon strode from his apartment and knocked on Penny's door in his normal repetitious fashion. He began to form his social pleasantries in his mind.

Like most people, Sheldon, can't recognize the chain of events known as the calm before the storm.

((Sorry for taking so long!! This Christmas was super busy for me, and now I've got other stuff to be planning, so I haven't had much of a chance to post!))

---

'Knock, knock, knock, "Penny"' was Penny's involuntary alarm clock that morning, waking her into a half-dream state. When it sounded the second time, a mere two seconds following the first—as it always did—Penny's eyes fluttered open drowsily, greeting a blurred vision of her room. The customary knocking procedure cast its final blow, at which point Penny rolled herself out of bed, slipped her feet into her slippers, and shuffled out into the main room. But she did not head towards the door, as one normally would when they heard someone knocking. Instead, she completely ignored the man standing, waiting, behind her door, and walked directly towards her kitchen in order to brew herself her regular morning cup o' Joe.

After several series of knocks Sheldon paused, hearing the muffled sounds of movement inside. If Penny was inside, why wouldn't she be answering the door? They had an agreed upon driver - drivee social bond. Then Sheldon realized that she must not realize it was him, perhaps she even thought it was someone vaguely annoying. For example, Howard or Leonard. Sheldon sighed to himself at Penny's obvious misunderstanding and pulled out his phone. A few deft taps and he was selecting 'Neighbor/Friend: Penelope' from his contacts and pressing the call button. Sheldon shifted slightly, waiting impatiently for Penny to answer her phone.

Thank God he had factored, 'Penny is slow moving and bad tempered before 10 am' into his scheduling - or they'd already be running late.

Mid-way through pouring her fifth spoonful of sugar into her coffee, Penny was just releasing a sigh, after finally hearing Sheldon's knocking cease, when, a moment later, her phone's ringtone pervaded the room. Penny smashed her spoon down onto the kitchen countertop and glared through slit eyelids at the buzzing phone, then at the door. For a moment, she considered just silencing her phone and remaining ignorant, but somehow Sheldon always had his ways. Instead, her eyes wandered over to an empty bottle of Buckley's cough syrup that she never managed to throw away, and an idea came to mind.

Quickly, Penny dabbed her nostrils with a little bit of water and violently rubbed her nose with the palm of her hand until it was a glowing red tint. In no later than 5 seconds, Penny was at her door, opening it only ever so slightly.

"I'm sorry, Sheldon... I'm sick..." Penny muttered sickly, adding an over-exaggerated cough that she didn't bother covering. "You better stay away... it's contagious and could last up to a week."