The Paladin Protocol (9)
Sheldon is looking forward to an afternoon of nothing more exacting than doodling about with some Yang-Mills instantons. But it's 'Anything Can Happen' Thursday, and Penny ambushes him, and announces that she's cooking dinner. In his kitchen. Which is unsupportable, anathema, not happening...
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The clerk in the grocery store blanches a little when Sheldon breezes through the door. This isn't his usual shopping day, after all, they were probably feeling quite relaxed, only worrying about possible armed hold-ups, not the crazy guy smelling all the tomatoes and demanding to know the exact temperature of the chill cabinet.
She reckons that Sheldon is on an alert list someplace -
...A darkened room, a lit screen, and a hush falling over the crowd.
"Ladies and gentlemen, please make a careful note of this face. If this man should enter the premises, this is a Code Red. On no account should you allow the subject to engage in debate, or allow him to approach other customers. Do not under any circumstance allow him near either the computer terminals or the sanitary facilities. Is this understood? The subject's name is Doctor Sheldon Cooper..."
Sheldon always shops with a list, written out in the order that the things appear on the shelves, (and which he never actually needs to refer to,) and it can be a quick process, if she can prevent him stopping to explain everything to her. She's getting a potted history of the pizza, the reason tomatoes are botanically speaking a fruit, and not a vegetable, and he's onto some involved and kinda revolting story about pepperoni...She's never known anyone who talks as much as Sheldon does, keeps a bright, interested smile on her face, and a firm hand between his shoulder-blades, steers him onwards. Getting quite good at this now, the way her fingers span across his back, right amount of pressure to encourage him on, not enough to make him dig his heels in.
Her 'phone goes, and she has to tuck it between her shoulder and her ear,
“Oh, hi, Mom...no, I'm getting some groceries...Sheldon, can you get the jar, I can't reach it? Thanks, honey...yeah, sorry, I was just...” Bites her lip, “Yeah, that's the one, Mom,” Rolls a slightly guilty eye, “My really smart friend.” Hopes that his freaky hearing hadn't picked up her mother's actual description - 'that nutbag neighbour of yours.'
Sheldon has heard, but hearing Penny describe him as her friend salves the sting, and he appreciates her use of flattery as diversionary tactic. Aware from his own experience of how long a maternal discourse can take, he is going to step away out of earshot, but Penny, misinterpreting the move, and very unwilling to let him roam free without supervision, tightens her hand into a grasp on his shirt.
“...yeah, well, I said she should leave the guy years ago...yeah, I know I don't know a thing about it...no, Mom, I don't think that's likely...”
Sheldon, standing there, holding the basket of groceries, and looking mildly offended that she is crumpling his clothing. She wonders if his mother ever nags him about settling down, or if she saves that for her other kids, resigned to her odd son following his own goofy little star. Smoothes out the material under her fingertips, apologetic face.
“...I gotta go, we're nearly at the checkout, love to you and Pop, huh? 'kay...”
Sheldon's eyebrows rising at the obvious untruth, but she glares, and he shuts his mouth. Penny drops the phone back into her pocket, whoosh of breath.
“You lied to your mother, Penny.”
“Do you wanna explain to her that I'm not giving her perfect grandbabies any time soon?” (Rubbing her eyes, misses a sudden look of startled revulsion that flits across Sheldon's face.) “My brother's a mess, my sister's marriage is falling apart, so they want me to be the one to get it right.”
Sheldon holds out a hand.
“I will certainly call her and give her the statistical unlikelihood of you producing physically perfect progeny within the near future. Whilst you are at a peak of fertility, and possess many of the attributes that would go towards fulfilling the physical ideal, your present...partner and presumed candidate for the task, whilst possessed of a certain intellectual capability to bring to the equation, is short, lactose-intolerant, inclined to male pattern baldness and has an Oedipal fixation. And since at this time, we do not have the technology to 'cut and paste' the genome...”
Penny pulls her jaw shut, gives him a little shove to get him moving again.
“...I think I preferred it when you were going on about boiling the pig's heads, Sheldon.”
Sheldon thinks he does, too. (Under his hand, the plastic handle of the basket creaks.) Whilst not averse to the idea of offspring in the abstract, the thought of Penny and...his mind skates away from picturing the scenario. Wonders if there was something a little 'off' in the burger he had for lunch, as his stomach lurches.
And Penny, still steaming in mild embarrassment and confusion, doesn't register the phrase 'physical ideal' until she is bagging the groceries, and by that time, Sheldon is having a disagreement (in Spanish) about coupons with the cashier.
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She'd always thought he'd be one of those sci-fi nuts who were all for food pills, but he's the one that owns the few cook-books, and they have a surprisingly good range of kitchenware, makes her ask,
“Why don't you guys cook real food more often?”
She's expecting some long rant, but Sheldon simply says,
“It becomes inconvenient when there are so many dietary factors to accommodate.”
She thinks on it, nods. Yeah, because Raj doesn't like really spicy food, goes through phases of renouncing meat, Howard is intermittently kosher and totally allergic to peanuts, and Leonard - well, she'd never had to consider how much stuff had corn or lactose in it before. Sheldon doesn't appear to have actual health issues with eating anything, though, just general Sheldon-y weirdness. Still finds it interesting that a man so supposedly germ-fearing will eat so much take-out and cafeteria food, but she's not ever gonna say that.
He still makes her wash her hands about four times, actually inspects her nails, before he'll let her touch anything.
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He's the better baker, she has to admit, with his precise weights and measures and method, and he doesn't cover himself in flour. She's watching him make the pizza crust, and there's something kinda hypnotic in those long, strong fingers kneading the dough, his sleeves rolled neatly back, corded muscles in his forearms. Drags her eyes away.
“I used to bake with my Nonna when I was small.” she says, suddenly. “I had to stir every cake, or it wouldn't come out right...”
Sheldon, about to point out the inherent idiocy of that assumption, finds himself saying instead,
“Meemaw useta let me cut out cookies...”
Such a normal thing, and she can imagine him, skinny, serious little boy. This is a part of his childhood that holds no pain, his face softens as he recalls it, his accent surfacing with fond memory, not stress. Penny thinks that she'd like to meet this woman, the one who calls him 'moon-pie' and who taught him to make that awesome zucchini bread. Hell, now she knows that Sheldon can bake, and seems to enjoy it, he's gonna be her go-to guy. Forget unsolicited gifts as conversational gambit, she's gonna see what he can do with cupcakes.
Sheldon, unaware that he has sold himself into culinary servitude, carefully puts a clean towel across the bowl of dough, and sets the timer.
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He wears safety goggles to chop the onion, minces it machine-blade fine with crisp strokes of the knife, while she chases freshly-skinned tomatoes around on her chopping-board. Gleefully crushes the garlic with an actual press - she usually hits it with a knife-blade, but Sheldon has a proper gadget - while he picks and shreds basil - never chop it, turns it black, oxidisation and blah blah science, and she tunes that out just to watch his precise fingers at work, deft and clever.
Sheldon follows recipes as if they are carved in stone. Penny adapts, experiments.
“If you don't taste it, how do you know it's okay?”
“If you are following the recipe, with no deviation, then the results should be consistent.”
“Just try the sauce, Sheldon.”
She holds the spoon out to him, hand held to catch the drips. And he very distrustfully takes a cautious peck at it.
He nearly has a coronary when she tastes off the spoon, too, and then goes to stir the sauce again.
They get through quite a lot of spoons.
She finds herself entranced by watching him knock back the dough, pushing it out to the edges of the pizza tin, all firm knuckles and strong strokes from the heel of his palm, and what is wrong with her?
Penny slathers sauce over the crust, with scant regard for equitable distribution, and how she doesn't manage to get it all over herself, Sheldon cannot fathom. It's like watching Jackson Pollock at work. Except he's not sure that the artist ever shook his hips to a slightly off-key rendition of 'A Little Less Conversation'. Her bright grin.
“Dance with me, Sheldon.”
“I don't dance.”
“C'mon.” She gets that look that means she's going to try and score a point. “Richard Feynman knew how to samba.”
Sheldon blinks at her. Okay, she scored that one. Penny looks smugly back. He sighs.
“You will not leave me alone until I accede to your requests, will you?”
“Do I ever?”
Turns out that he can dance, he just chooses not to. Unless forced. She shouldn't be surprised by now, the things that Sheldon does know. But watching him reluctantly shake his booty is something she's not quite prepared for, both of them singing along to the radio as they wash up.
He finds himself wondering when her voice stopped grating across his nerves.
She finds herself wondering what those hips would be like if she ever got him juiced again, and put on a little party music.
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They both chirp a bright “hello” to Leonard as he comes through the door, and stops short.
Co-ordinated rhythm in it, the two of them grooving along, something that sounds like country rather than a sea shanty this time, Sheldon chopping ingredients with neat precision, and handing them to Penny, who arranges them with cheerful abandon. Something smells really good.
Tells himself that this is a good thing, that his room-mate and his girlfriend are getting along now. That this is the first time that Penny has cooked for him, that has to be a positive thing, right?
Penny, struggling to open a jar of olives, growls with frustration, and Sheldon scoops the jar out of her hands, opens it with an effortless twist. Penny promptly steals one, and Sheldon, opening his mouth to protest, finds himself being fed.
She hadn't thought she'd get away with it, had done it before she really thought, too tempted by that open mouth to resist. His face...
He, Sheldon Cooper, accepting food from another's hand? Never. But Penny is swift and devious, and gets the olive past his defences. He is forced to ingest the offering, so as to chastise her for it.
She just fed him. Penny just put an olive in Sheldon's mouth. And he ate it.
Leonard rubs his eyes, wonders if he drove through a Trek-style spatial anomaly on the way home without noticing.
But no, that is definitely Sheldon, scolding her for her theft, and fussing over the exact placing of the pepperoni slices. Penny simply steals another olive, and smirks at him, black orb between her own teeth.
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The pizzas are really good, and there is a scary similarity to their smug expressions.
Howard (“Cheese and pepperoni? A double score again.”) has invited Bernadette, and they are feeding each other bites of pizza. Leonard would do the same with his cheese-free ham and olive, but Penny is troughing through the cheese version, strings of mozzarella everywhere. Raj, even more subdued than normal, even after a glass of wine, surreptitiously picks mushrooms off his slice, vainly hoping to evade the eagle-eyed gaze of the other cook. Luckily, Sheldon is too busy juggling a loaf of garlic bread out of the oven to do more than glare and grumble mildly.
You could kill a vampire with the smell alone. Howard, ever hopeful, declines the passion-killer, but Leonard watches another slice of the horror disappear between Penny's perfect lips, and tosses back the remains of his second glass of wine.
It is a good thing, Sheldon and Penny getting along, she's making an effort to deal with him. If he tells himself that often enough, has another glass of wine, he can forget that little twist inside, that feeling of intruding when he came through his own front door.