Penny reached up to rub her eye tiredly, depositing a dusting of flour on her face in the process. "Maybe this was a bad idea," she stated in a dull voice.
Sheldon turned to look at her with raised eyebrows. "What do you mean?"
"I can't cook, Sheldon."
"Yes, I know," he answered, turning his back to her and continuing with his stirring. "That is why you asked for my assistance."
She stepped around her island to face him. "I didn't actually ask for your assistance, you know. I said 'I'm going to bake a cake for Raj's birthday', and you said 'you don't bake, though' and decided I needed your amazing cooking expertise." She watched the way he neatly poured the batter into the waiting greased pan. "How is it you know how to do everything, anyway?"
He looked at her somewhat bashfully. "My meemaw taught me how to cook when I was little."
Penny couldn't stop the grin from coming to her face. "That is so cute," she squeaked out. Sheldon rolled his eyes at her before turning and placing the pan in the heated oven.
"Yes, well it's much cuter when you don't know of Jimmy Durden and his affinity for throwing balloons filled with his own urine at me every time I stepped outside." He picked up a dishrag and started wiping down her countertop. Penny watched him silently for a moment as he busied himself with returning to cocoa to its shelf and placing the eggs back in the fridge. "He used to call me 'Smelly Cooper'. Penny swallowed the soft chuckle that threatened to escape her throat. "Which, I guess after being hit with pee balloons was a true enough moniker." He turned his back to her again and turned on the faucet to start washing dishes.
"Oh Sheldon, honey don't worry about doing the dishes. I'll do them later." He turned around and looked at her as if she'd lost her mind.
"You know that if I leave this apartment with these dishes still dirty, I will do nothing but worry about them." He put his head down and started scrubbing and rinsing. Penny continued to put away the various baking supplies that were strewn across her countertop. After capping the vanilla and putting it in the cupboard, she ambled over to the draining rack, now almost full of clean dishes.
"So, where did 'Sheldon' come from anyway?" she asked as she bent to retrieve a clean towel from the drawer. He gave her an odd look. "The name," she clarified.
"My grandfather," he answered distractedly as he meticulously cleaned her wire whisk. "My father's father was Sheldon Cooper."
"So, you're Sheldon the second," Penny noted as she picked up a large mixing bowl. Looking at it, she thought it might actually be cleaner than the day she bought it.
"Different middle names," Sheldon corrected, shaking his head. "You can only be referred to as a 'second' or 'third' if the name is the exact same. His middle name was James, as mine is Lee." He held the whisk up for closer examination. "I think there is still food on here from the last time you used it for something."
"Oh," was all Penny could answer. She would never get over the amount of knowledge hurled at her every time Sheldon opened his mouth. It was like being in school. She had never liked school on a whole, but for some reason when it came out of Sheldon, it felt different.
"So, how did your parents arrive at the name Penelope?" Penny blinked at him, confused for a moment. Was he really trying to converse about something that didn't involve him?
"Uh, I- my mom is a teacher." Penny picked up a spatula and dried it. "She teaches high school English back in Nebraska, which I used to think was the worst thing ever, but now is actually pretty cool." It was true that at the time she'd had her own mother as her teacher, she'd wanted to rip her arm off and beat herself with it. "Anyway, she really loves Homer, and so all of us-"
"-are named after characters from 'The Odyssey'?" Sheldon finished for her, his face full of surprise.
"You know 'The Odyssey'?" Penny asked, her mouth quirked up on one side.
"'The Odyssey', an epic Greek poem written by Homer. Twelve thousand, one hundred and ten lines, all written in dactylic hexameter. It tells of Odysseus's journey home after the fall of Troy." The words spilled ridiculously easily from the tall man's mouth, as if he'd been waiting to say them and simply needed the correct prompt.
"So…yes?" Penny asked sarcastically. "My sister's given name is Calypso, and my brother's is Telemachus. They go by Callie and T.J. of course." She sighed and turned toward Sheldon. "We maintain to this day that she just didn't want to give us a chance at a normal life." The physicist was looking at her with a furrowed brow. "What?"
"It's just that the character of Penelope is known for her faithfulness. In fact, in the poem Penelope ignores scores of suitors in favor of pretending to finish a tapestry, when in actuality she is merely waiting for her true love to come to her." He gave Penny a significant look before returning to his washing.
"I'm sorry," Penny said through clenched teeth. "Did you really just manage to be a literary snob and call me easy at the same time?"
"Hardly," Sheldon scoffed. "Furthermore, there is no way your mother could have known you would not hold the same virtues as your namesake. Is your sister a water nymph?" Penny stared at him open-mouthed. "I shouldn't think so."
"Conversations with you make my head hurt," Penny stated, sighing.
"It could just be problems with your sinuses, as you routinely get during these months of the year." He continued washing, his shoulder hunched down toward the beaters from the mixer. "In either regard, I suggest taking an over the counter pain reliever-" He paused and looked over at her, before adding, "aspirin".
She smiled sarcastically at him before retorting, "Thanks".
"Anytime," he answered with a small smile, missing her tone entirely. Not that it surprised Penny in the least. Sheldon was an odd sort of creature, she had decided. Alternately sweet and psychotic, the way he responded to certain situations continually astounded her. There was a naivety to him, which Penny supposed came from a certain amount of emotional stunting in his childhood. But it was the sweetness, the genuine caring she saw coming from him at times that floored her. Sheldon showed an alarming amount of depth for someone whose friends largely considered him to be a robot.
"So, what do you want to do after the cake comes out of the oven?" she asked, turning one hundred and eighty degrees to lean her back against the counter. Sheldon raised one eyebrow at her. "What?"
"Why would we continue to spend any time together after our baking excursion is finished?" he asked, perplexed.
"Because we're bonding?" She hung her towel over the handle of the oven. She shrugged before crossing her arms over her chest.
"Oh," he nodded as he rinsed the sink out, all the dishes clean. "You're still insisting on attempting to maintain a so-called 'friendship' with me?"
Penny frowned at him silently. "I'm capable of being your friend, Sheldon." He laughed humorlessly. "Come on, we could go to a movie. There's a thing where people look at goats that just opened."
"What is it about?" he asked.
She ginned. "It's about Clooney and McGregor."
"Is it possible," the physicist questioned as he started folding clothes she had scattered across the back of her couch, "that your need to prove me wrong in some way eclipses your wish to actually befriend any of us?"
"No," Penny answered quickly.
"I see," Sheldon responded sarcastically, his voice giving off the tiniest hint of a southern twang. "So your playing laser tag with Howard the other day simply comes from a strong desire to spend time with him?"
She gritted her teeth. "Yes." He smiled somewhat evily in response. "Why do you think it's not a valid point that I feel the need to get closer to my boyfriend's friends?" She was on the verge of climbing onto the couch so she would be at a sufficient height to throttle the physicist. The expression on his face stopped her in her tracks, however. Anything that had been soft a moment ago was now hard, stoic.
"Penny, I'm going to make this simple for you, as I know you are at a lower perceived level of intelligence than I." He linked his hands behind his back and stepped ever so slightly toward her. "I have absolutely no intention of ever being your friend, Penelope."
The silence hung heavy in the air. Penny felt something welling up inside of her and was thankful when the oven timer dinged, giving her an excuse to turn her back to him. She bent to pull the pan out of the oven, she hearing door open and then shut behind her, but didn't turn to look at him. As Penny placed the pan on the stovetop, she bumped her index finger against the hot metal, burning her skin. Finally turning, she looked at her empty apartment before glancing down at her finger. A tear rolled down her cheek, landing on the singed digit.
"Damn it," she whispered.