Chapter 7

"Penny Cooper, what's mine is ours, got it? Jesus…"

Sheldon Cooper was way smarter than a rocket scientist by several orders of magnitude but he was dumb as a bag of hammers when it came to human beings and their emotions. Still, it only took him 3.8 seconds to review what was said, done, and the results of his spontaneous utterance.

'I called her Penny Cooper! It was an unthinking comment on my part. Some part of me acknowledges that she is Penny Cooper even if it's not occurring within a legal social construct of this reality. It was not a slip of the tongue then. And she very astutely caught it and either it embarrassed and humiliated her to the point of tears or…'

His long strides carried him to the closed bathroom door and he knocked once, only once, and opened the door and walked in.

Penny was sitting on the edge of the bathtub with her face in her hands. It didn't take much to discern that she was quietly weeping and something in his chest tightened with guilt.

"Go away, Sheldon. Get out. I don't want you to see me like this. Just, just go."

"Go where, Penny?" Was she throwing him out? Was she angry because of his slip of the tongue?

"I don't care. Go to the living room, the bedroom, the kitchen, out into the hallway, your own apartment, I don't care. Leave me alone, Sheldon."

Sheldon turned to the sink and grabbed a face cloth and ran warm water over it and then knelt down in front of his – what? – he wasn't sure yet, and pulled her hands from her face and gently washed away the tears and makeup and then set the face cloth aside.

"Penny?" She was still looking downwards and he needed to see her face, her eyes, so he lightly grasped her chin between his thumb and forefinger and lifted it until she was facing him.

"Oh, Penny…" came his whispered voice and he leaned over and kissed her. Her lips were different than he remembered – softer and fuller – and she tasted like strawberries and sunshine.

"I'm sorry," she whispered after he ended the brief kiss. He interpreted her words as rejection and he felt something tug in his head and the voice of Dream Penny seemed to laugh at him.

'See! Loser! Come back to me, Sheldon. I won't reject you." The voice seemed to have a hissing quality about it.

Before he could over-think the situation Penny placed the palms of her hands on either side of his face and kissed him back - really kissed him, sucking his lower lip between hers and lightly running the point of her tongue over it. There was nothing tentative about it.

When the kiss ended, Penny whispered, "I'm sorry for walking out on you, Shel, but you called me 'Penny Cooper' and it was just too much for me to handle. I'm not Penny Cooper, Sheldon."

"I know that. It was just wishful thinking or perhaps a Freudian slip, although that rubbish hardly deserves to be considered – "

She kissed him again to shut him up. "You think too much, Moon Pie."

"Penny, don't call me Moon Pie."

They both remembered the last time he'd said it and Penny smiled and then laughed. So what if his brain was a little scrambled after two surgeries. She'd just have to handle it. He was here, awake and aware, and she needed to keep him focused on the 'here and now', not the 'there and then' of his delusional dreams.

A/N: Short but I wanted to keep tickling the keys. I'll be finishing up everything and then disappearing for a while until I find a new home.

Rep 6/13/2012