Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 52nd cycle. Now cycle 53!

THIRD ANNIVERSARY CYCLE: It's late October again, and within this cycle I will be completing my third year of daily gleekathon stories and commencing a fourth! As in previous years, this means special things happening. I've selected my favorite stories from throughout the year, and I'll be treating them to something special. In previous years this included Prequel, Sequel, and POV Swap, and then Additional Scenes and Alternate Endings. This year I'm adding two new treatments: Genre Swap (I think that's pretty straightforward) and Element Change (I change one thing in the story, see how it affects the rest). Note that in both these cases and some of the others, there may excerpts directly transferred from the story it references. Also, since this year saw the addition of 'shift days', and since I suck at picking, I have selected 42 stories, to be treated two per day! So here we go!

This story is a Prequel to The Troubletone Incursion, a TBBT/Glee crossover, originally posted from February 23 to 29 2012.

This is a double shift day. There will be one more upload today: Drown It Away.

"The Girlfriend Thing"
TBBT - Penny & Sheldon
Glee - Brittany
Prequel to "The Troubletone Incursion"

(ps: the next installment with chapters begiiiiins... Friday!)

At first there had been some issues with the time difference. Brittany had calculated it wrong and ended up staying awake until three in the morning so she could call her friends in California. Penny had sorted her out, and now she would call at decent hours for all of them. The night before though, Brittany had called and Penny had been on her way out, so she had told her to call the next morning. It had occurred to her that this might lead to trouble, but she had overlooked it for now.

It was 6:45 in the morning when her phone rang, and it pulled her from a dream she would be plenty disappointed to leave. Once she'd managed to pull her eyes open enough to see the screen, she groaned into her pillow before answering. She didn't want Brittany thinking she'd messed things up. "Hey…" she stretched the word to disguise a yawn as she crawled clumsily from her bed and felt for the walls to lead her to her kitchen.

"Did I wake you up?" Brittany asked.

"No, no, you d… ow!" she froze as pain shot up her foot, having miscalculated her pass around the couch. Her stubbed toe ached, but she bit back any other response… She just had to get to the coffee. "How are you?" she covered as she went. Her hands thankfully had something of muscle memory when it came to making coffee even if she was still half-asleep, or drunk, or hungover… Once it was in the machine and she had to wait though, her countertop was starting to look like a suitable pillow replacement.

"I'm good, I'm spending the day with Santana today," she revealed, and even half-asleep and miles and miles away, Penny could hear the smile in her words.

"Oh, yeah, that's your friend, right?" she asked.

"Actually she's my girlfriend," Brittany revealed, and for a moment Penny figured she meant this as 'close female friend,' but then she paused, putting the pieces together to understand she meant the other way, and her eyes grew wide for a moment.

"I didn't know you were… I thought… Well that's great!" she landed on the important part of the matter, just as her coffee maker made a noise and then… stopped. Penny startled, trying to revive it somehow, but there was no use, and thus she was left caffeine free. "No…" she whimpered.

"What's wrong?" Brittany asked.

"The coffee died…" Penny glared at the machine. "Quick, tell me something," she begged.

"Like what?"

"I don't know, something to surprise me or…" She didn't want to tell her now about being still half-asleep, not after hiding it since she'd answered her call.

"I don't know… There's Sheldon, he…" her mind had gone somewhere, then stopped, which did help Penny to awaken just a bit.

"What about Sheldon?" Penny asked.

"No, but he told me not to…"

"Oh, come on, I won't tell," Penny swore. She hadn't even really said a thing and already it was working.

"Well…" Brittany still hesitated, but then she couldn't hold it back. "Sheldon's a pretty good dancer, did you know that?" Penny didn't know to stop the response, she just burst out laughing.

"Are you serious?"

"We played the game, when I was there, you know?" Brittany explained.

"Oh, I do know," Penny tried to contain her laughter. "Thank you for that… Wait, what song?"

"It was the one with the pirate guy," Brittany provided, and Penny didn't know how to respond to the visual in her mind.

"Wow…" she told herself, which was quickly followed by the realization that if her machine was broken, she could use the boys'. She went and took her key to the apartment, sneaking toward the hall and carefully opening the d… There was a loud screech and she jumped back. "Woah!" she looked back in to find Sheldon standing from his spot on the couch, brandishing what she had to guess was some toy or another. He glared at her with wide eyes, while she tried to catch her breath. "Sorry, didn't know you were up," she tossed him the phone. "For you," she told him before making a beeline to the machine where a pot sat, already filled. She took a cup, filled it, and exited the apartment without giving another word. Sheldon watched her go before looking down to the phone and holding it to his ear.

"H… Hello?"

"Hi, Sheldon!" Brittany's voice came on and his panic started to evaporate, replaced with what seemed to be his automatic response to her nowadays. As problematic as she had been to him at the beginning, the last days of her visit a few months back had revealed her as someone he sort of didn't mind interacting with at all. He had no words for it, it just was, and for once he didn't need to know more than that.

"Oh, hello," he replaced his would-be weapon against his 'intruder' and resumed his post in his seat. He had been up a while now, so there was no place for such things as 'isn't this a little early to be calling?' Brittany for her part had this sudden realization that she had betrayed a secret by telling Penny about the dancing, and now she feared what would happen if he found out.

"Did you watch the videos I sent you?" she asked, as a way not to approach the other subject, even if she was already lying in pretending she had sent the videos herself instead of having Santana do it for her.

"Of course I did," he told her like it was so very obvious. She had sent them to him, expecting them to be watched, so they would be watched. "And I maintain my previous statement, they would be lost without you." The girl gave a laugh.

"Thanks."

"I've also made a copy for your aunt, as you asked," he informed her, leaving out the part where the woman had wanted him to go and watch them with him. He might have become something like friends with the niece, but it didn't mean he was just going to buddy up to everyone, especially the aunt, as he was well aware of her habits in this building. If he had trouble acclimating himself to new environments, this one was just giving him too many warning signs.

"We have another competition soon, maybe you guys could come and see us," Brittany offered.

"Well I can check, but the next few weeks are heavily booked," he warned.

"That's okay. If you can't come then I'll send a video again," she didn't sound disappointed at all, and that was one thing he could appreciate.

"I should go, Penny stole my mug, and I have her phone."

"Okay, talk to you later then! Bye Sheldon."

"Bye Brittany."

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!