Author's Note: Written on Livejournal for roh_wyn for the drabble meme who requested crack!fic about Raj working for with Sheldon and "popcorn"

"Popcorn?"

Sheldon's head tilted slightly to the left at the sound but eyes didn't leave the whiteboard. After nearly four hours of silence, he had forgotten that Raj was in the lab with him, working on his medial childlike task he had been assigned in the back corner – reexamining the results of the PAMELA payload positron findings from 2006. Damn the pulsar effect.

Staring at the equations before him, Sheldon said "I can't possibly see how the answer could be popcorn. Unless popcorn has some sort of ability to stop inverse compton scattering that I am as of yet unaware of. Which I doubt it does, because a hard moisture-sealed hull and a dense starch type filling causes it to pop when exposed to heat, meaning that even if it had some sort of effect, which it wouldn't, it would speed up and not slow down the gamma rays." He huffed with annoyance, "If I had known that you know absolutely nothing about the make up of a simple snack food, I would have considered hiring you for this position. I can't just let anybody work for me."

"Who said anything about gamma rays? I was simply wondering if you wanted any of popcorn. I brought my machine out of my office when I came to work with you." Raj flicked a switch, and the machine began to hum, and would start to produce popped corn within minutes.

Narrowing his eyes, Sheldon considered his options carefully, weighing the urgency of his hunger against his need to solve the problem on the board, but knowing that without more information, he would be unable to make a logical decision; further investigation was needed. "What kind is it?"

Raj sighed, "Its Orville Redenbacher"

"Is it salted?"

"No."

"Is it buttered?"

"Yes." Placing the bowl on the desk behind him, Raj leaned back and folded his arms across his chest, glaring at the back of Sheldon's head. "I can't believe I'm doing this with you. Do you think I'm Leonard, pretending to care and sugarcoating your OCD as quirky fun?"

Ignoring him, Sheldon continued, "Real or artificial?"

"Real."

"What brand of butter did you use?"

"Does it really matter?" Raj spat out.

With those words, Sheldon finally turned away from the whiteboard to stare disbelievingly at Raj. "Does it… Of course it matters! That is like asking if it matters who rescues you from a burning building between Superman and a Shih Tzu."

"Fine. It's 'I Can't Believe It's Not Butter'."

"Then why on earth would you say it was real when the name clearly says that it is not? That's putting the Shih Tzu in a knitted sweater with a red S sewn onto the back of it and sending it in as the fire brigade."

"Does that mean that you don't want any?"

"No. I don't want any because I don't like Orville Redenbacher popcorn, as I find that the colouring of the kernels disconcerting in most boxes and the fact that popcorn in different boxes of the same brand look slightly different and not uniform across the masses. I just wanted to know how many questions you would answer until you said something preposterous, just as I knew you would. You just fell for one of my classic pranks." A smile passed over his face as he turned towards his board once again, returning to his work. "Bazinga."