Too much?
Sheldon practices his proposal, and Penny doesn’t like it.
If she lays her head on the table, he’s going to get angry. If she closes his eyes, he’ll notice. Really, there’s no way to win this.
“There are-” Sheldon breaks off and stops pacing up and down. He pauses, pulls the flash card from out of his pocket and looks at it.
They’re in his old room, the one which she and Leonard still haven’t transformed into anything new. They’d thought about what to do with it, they’d discussed it at length, and somehow never gotten around to doing anything with it. Leonard had joked about making it a nursery, since their oldest child had already left. Penny still hadn’t laughed about it.
“Will you pay attention, please, this is important!”
Penny nods and folds her arms over her chest. “Go on.”
“Alright,” Sheldon nods, whether in approval or annoyance she can’t quite gather. He puts the flashcard back in his pocket. “There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well.” He nods again, stands more straight and looks directly at Penny. She should focus. She really should. After all, he went through all this trouble memorizing these ridiculous lines. The worst part is that they sound exactly like something Sheldon Cooper would say to a friend on a drizzly Monday morning after they spilled his tea. “The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense.” He takes a deep breath.
“It sucks,” she declares, getting to her feet and the expression of outrage and hurt on his face immediately makes her regret she said it, “I mean, it’s nice that you learned the lines from her favourite book and all, but it’s not very personal-“
“But it is, I find everybody but her hard to live with. The world makes no sense without her.”
“Fine,” Penny says. “Then tell her that. Don’t do this crap. I mean, she loves you, you love her, that should be enough. And don’t plan it all out. She’ll say yes no matter what.”
“Don’t plan it all out. Do you hear yourself, woman?!” Sheldon snorts derisively, picks the box with the ring up again and puts it back into his pocket and struds over to the door. “Do you really think she’s going to say yes?”
“I really do,” Penny answers, smiling despite herself. “When are you going to ask her?”
“You just said I should stop planning!”
Penny sighs and gestures for him to open the door. “I know.”
https://archiveofourown.org/works/22511131