So I got an idea, and apparently I'm the first one to come up with it...yay! Crazy, is it not? The first Big Bang Theory and Once Upon A Time fanfic on this site will commence!

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Penny," Leonard sang as he presented her with a cupcake with a candle stuck on top of it.

Penny smiled as she stared at him and the cupcake. She knew the cupcake was a silly tradition, but it always made her feel better whenever she felt lonely or misunderstood. Growing up in a dead-end life in Nebraska, roaming around with numerous boyfriends, or trying to get into acting here in Los Angeles…sometimes she felt like moping even when she was supposed to be celebrating. But with Leonard there…well, it was just an extra special treat, nothing more or less. Someday soon, she might ignore the tradition, but for now, she wanted to share it.

"Happy birthday to you. Make a wish and blow it out." Leonard said.

"Oh, Leonard, I already got my wish a long time ago." Penny said, kissing him before she blew it out, causing him to blush.

"Well, you still have got to wish for something, anything. It's against the birthday rules not to. An audition to go well, maybe?" He asked.

Penny glared at him before she said, "Maybe." She didn't feel like being pressed, especially when her acting career wasn't taking off as she might have hoped, but Leonard at least understood, mostly. There was that time a couple of weeks ago when the two of them had gotten into a huge argument because she quit her job to focus full-time on her acting career, but they had managed to work that out. She plucked out the candle and licked the icing before she grabbed the cupcake, unwrapped it, and started eating.

"Save some room for more." He told her. "We've got a big surprise for you across the hall." Leonard added, smiling. "The party is just getting started!" He opened the door to Penny's apartment and stared down at a ten-year-old boy with a backpack who was just about to knock.

"Oh. Hello, there." Leonard said, a little shocked to see a kid alone at night out in the hallway of his apartment building. He didn't even know if there were kids living here. "Are you lost? I can call security or the police to help." He said as Penny looked up and stood to see what was going on.

"I'm looking for Penny Swan." The boy said.

"Yeah, that's me." She really hated that last name of hers, never mentioned it out loud if she could help it. "What do you want, kid?" Penny asked, staring down at the boy.

"About ten years ago, you gave up your son for adoption." The boy said, shocking Leonard as Penny paled. "And I'm him. My name is Henry Mills." He told her.

"Penny, is this true?" Leonard asked, staring at her.

"Oh, boy, this is going to be one hell of a night." Penny muttered, wiping her hand through her hair as she thought about that night all those years ago when she had given up her son. She never thought that she would live to see this day. Hopefully there would be a way to settle this without any trouble. "All right, kid, we're going to have a serious discussion about the situation and then we're going to send you back home. Where do you live?" She asked.

"Storybrooke, Maine." Henry said.

"Maine? As in all the way across the country Maine?" Penny said.

"Oh, god." Leonard said, shaking his head as he realized how serious this was.

"Yeah." Henry said, nodding. "I stole my teacher's credit card, rode the bus to the airport, and then flew over here all by myself."

"Wow. Good for you." Penny said, impressed at the kid's pluck in spite of herself.

"No, not good for you!" Leonard said, groaning. "You shouldn't have done that! Henry, please, could you…go across the hall and ask for some cake or something?" He asked. "We're having a party tonight for your…mom's birthday." Leonard said, still not feeling right about referring to Penny as that. "I live there, our friends have come over, and it should be fun."

"All right, thanks. It's my birthday, too." Henry added before he turned and went across the hall.

"It's his birthday, too?" Leonard repeated.

"Yeah." Penny said, looking down. "I gave birth to him on this day."

"Oh, god, he really is your son." Leonard said.

"Yeah, he is." Penny smiled to herself in spite of everything, wondering what the kid was like. Hopefully he took after her and not his father.

Henry knocked at the door and after a minute, Sheldon answered. "You're not Penny." He stated, and lifted his head to look across the hallway like a lost, confused puppy. "Leonard? Penny? What's going on here? Who's this kid and why is he over here?" They could see the rest of their friends coming up behind Sheldon, craning their heads to see what was going on here.

"My name is Henry Mills." He said, glancing up at Sheldon and the others. "Hello, everybody." He said, waving at them as they waved back.

"Please, Sheldon, just let him in for a couple of minutes, Penny and I really need to talk." Leonard said.

"Why aren't you two over here?" Sheldon asked. "The party is going to be ruined. I had the cake evenly divided into sevenths. Do you know how hard that is with a sheet cake?"

"Just give my piece to the kid." Leonard said. "It's his birthday, too."

"Oh, really?" Sheldon asked, staring down at the kid. "Happy birthday. Do you know what the odds are of you having the same birthday as another person? It's four-"

"Sheldon, not right now." Leonard said, shaking his head as he closed the door to Penny's apartment.

"You had a son and you never told me? You never told us, your friends?" Leonard said, feeling hurt.

"Hey, it was ages ago and I never thought he would come back to see me." Penny said. "I thought he would be happy, wherever he wound up. He wouldn't want to meet his deadbeat mom."

Leonard groaned. "Penny, you're not…don't doubt yourself, okay? You're stronger and braver than I ever could be. You have a ton of good, great qualities. Any kid would be proud of having you for a parent!" He exclaimed.

"Oh, Leonard," Penny said, hugging him tightly. "Thanks, I needed to hear that." She said.

"So tell me, what happened? How did it happen?" Leonard asked.

"What do you think? I was at a really tough time in my life." Penny said. "Not a kid, and not a grown-up either, a teenager. I got involved with a criminal boyfriend, he abandoned me, and I was left pregnant. My parents said I could keep him if I wanted to, like a pet, but I didn't want to put him through hell of being with me and my family. If I could, I would have left that place a long time ago. So I gave him up for adoption to an out-of-state agency. I didn't want him growing up in Nebraska either if I could help it." She added.

"Oh, Penny…I'm sorry." He said, hugging her.

"It's okay. It was a long time ago." She sighed. "At least things have gotten better for me. I've got friends I can trust, and you to love." She smiled. "And Henry looks like a good kid. I bet he's pretty happy in…Storybrooke, Maine." She grimaced. "Who would name a place that?"

"Oh, this is a disaster!" Leonard said, finally panicking. "We could be charged with child endangerment or kidnapping or-"

"Hey!" Penny said, holding up a hand to stop him. "We are not going to panic. We are going to take him back home as soon as possible. We are going to apologize profusely, and maybe then they will forgive us or at least give us a lenient sentence for bringing him back home safely." Penny said, nodding. "I'll take him back myself. I don't want you to face-"

"No, we'll do it together." Leonard sighed. "I don't want you to face prison without someone by your side."

"Even though you'll be risking your career?" She asked him.

"Even then." He said, nodding, though he dreaded that thought. He loved being and working at CalTech. It was like his second home.

"You're pretty brave yourself, Leonard. Don't sell yourself short." She remarked. "Henry would be proud of…" She hesitated and shook her head. "Never mind that, Henry is going back home and we are going back to our normal, regularly scheduled and programmed lives." She added.

"Right." Leonard said, although he couldn't help wondering if having Henry around was going to change everything.

"So, cake?" Sheldon asked, studying the kid as he entered the apartment, wondering who he was and how he had gotten here. It seemed unusual for a kid to be there. As far as he knew, neither Penny nor Leonard had any nieces or nephews or cousins or kid relatives of any kind, especially around this boy's age. He wondered if it might be the child of a friend that Penny was asked to babysit, though that would be doubtful, as who would trust Penny to babysit a kid? He certainly never would have thought of that if he ever had any children of his own, which seemed quite unlikely. The others turned their heads, staring at the kid as well.

"Yes, please." Henry said, staring around at everybody as he approached the table, not certain what he was doing here. He wondered if they were all like Sheldon. "Uh…what piece is mine?" He asked, remembering what Leonard and Sheldon had been talking about. He had briefly encountered people like Sheldon before in the waiting room of Dr. Hooper's office and knew that they liked being in control.

"That one." Sheldon pointed and Amy sliced it off for the boy. "Leonard likes sprinkles. I don't, too much food coloring and preservative. They look like fruity birdseed."

"Oh, cool, thanks." Henry said, ignoring Sheldon's comment as he took his piece and sat down on the floor next to Raj. "Hello," He said, nodding and smiling at everybody. "I'm Henry Mills."

"I'm Dr. Raj Koothrappali." Raj said, holding out his hand for Henry to shake. "That's Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler and her boyfriend Dr. Sheldon Cooper." Amy waved and Sheldon nodded.

"You can call me Sheldon." Sheldon said, deciding to be magnanimous to the boy.

"Boyfriend? Doctor? Really?" Henry asked.

"I know." Raj said, rolling his eyes and grinning as Amy lightly slapped him. "Ow! Hey, watch it, I was only joking." Raj said.

"Don't push it." Amy told Raj before smiling at the kid. "Hi, there, Henry."

"Hi." He said, a little crept out by the lady. He glanced around the apartment and noticed some interesting decorations on the wall, comic book and TV-show related as he felt his fingers itching to check out the DVDs, video games, comic books and books lining the shelves. They certainly had a lot of good stuff, he realized.

"I'm Howard Wolowitz, and this is my wife Dr. Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz or Bernie." Howard said, grinning at his wife.

"Bernie?" Bernadette said, glaring at Howard.

"Sorry, sweetie." Howard said, shrinking down slightly.

"Wow. Are all of you here doctors?" Henry asked.

"Not Howard." Sheldon said, smirking.

"Thanks." Howard said, rolling his eyes. "But I have been to space. I'm the only one here who can say that!" He exclaimed as Henry gaped at him.

"You were an astronaut?" Henry asked.

"Payload Specialist on the International Space Station for a couple of weeks. Hold on, I'm going to find my picture." Howard said, reaching around to grab his bag.

"Sweetie, he doesn't want to see that right now." Bernadette said. "Maybe later."

"No, I do, I like astronauts. I would like to see it." Henry said before looking around at the others. "So…you're not medical doctors?" He asked.

"I'm an astrophysicist at Caltech." Raj said.

"Microbiologist at a pharmaceutical." Bernadette said.

"Neurobiologist here, I thank you very much." Amy grinned.

"Theoretical physicist at Caltech." Sheldon said. "Very complex stuff, you wouldn't understand."

"Aerospace engineer at Caltech." Howard said, looking up from his bag. "I deal with applied physics, not theories!" He grinned as Sheldon's eyes narrowed. "That's how I got on the space station."

"I thought it was your space toilet." Sheldon said, smirking.

"Sheldon, be nice to him!" Bernadette ordered.

"Sorry." Sheldon said, lowering his head.

"Anyway, here's my picture!" Howard said, handing it over to Henry. "I'll sign it for you if you want. Just don't go selling it on eBay, kid, okay?"

"Okay, I won't." Henry said, staring at the picture and the backside. He might have to double-check to see if it wasn't fake, but he had a feeling that it was real. "Wow." Henry said, shocked at meeting so many intelligent, educated, and talented people in the same room, acting not so intelligent sometimes. This really was a bizarre place.

"So…what about Penny and the other guy who lives here?" Henry asked. "What do they do? Are they scientists and doctors as well?"

"Penny? She's not a doctor or a scientist." Sheldon said. "She doesn't even have a bachelor's degree."

"Sheldon." Amy warned as the others glared at him.

"What? It's the truth." Sheldon turned back to Henry and said, "She used to work at the Cheesecake Factory as a waitress before she quit her job to pursue her acting career full-time, although that hasn't worked out."

"Oh." Henry said, lowering his head, feeling slightly embarrassed and angry at Sheldon's conceit about his birth mother.

"Dr. Leonard Hofstader is my roommate and colleague, an experimental physicist who works out the theorems that I devise." Sheldon remarked. "Penny is his girlfriend. We met her soon after she moved in here about six years ago."

"Six years ago." Henry remarked, trying to imagine his mother arriving here in Los Angeles while he was barely more than a toddler back home.

"They're bound to be engaged soon." Bernadette remarked, picking at her cake. "I'm surprised it hasn't happened already, although they are so off and on again sometimes that it makes one's head spin."

"I wish I could have some of that." Amy remarked, glancing at Sheldon.

"Tell me about it." Raj said, rolling his eyes. "Those nights when I had to comfort Penny after a bad breakup, either with her and Leonard or another guy, were absolutely dreadful."

"Oh, no." Henry said, staring up at Raj.

"She deserves better." Amy remarked.

"She's had some bad luck with men, which is a shame." Raj confirmed. "She's a stunningly beautiful girl and Leonard's a great guy. They would be perfect for each other, or at least complement each other as a couple. Though he can be a bit of a scaredy-cat sometimes." Raj remarked.

"Coming from a guy who couldn't speak to or in the presence of girls for years unless he was drunk." Howard remarked, which caused Henry to laugh.

"Hey, I never said I wasn't a coward." Raj remarked. "At least I have gotten better at it, and improved myself. Leonard has to improve himself." He told Henry, "I don't know where he gets it from. I suppose he had a horrible childhood with his over-analyzing psychiatrist and neuroscientist mother. If only he could propose to Penny without a push."

"Maybe with a sizeable charge or appropriate stimulation to his adrenal medulla." Amy said.

"I know the feeling." Henry said, thinking of his own mother Regina Mills, the evil Queen, as over-analyzing and a control freak.

"Well, that's never going to happen." Sheldon remarked. "Leonard wouldn't even accept when Penny proposed to him two months ago. Of course, she was drunk and upset over her acting career, and he thought that she wasn't in her right mind then to make such a decision."

Henry opened his mouth to say something, but then the apartment door opened as Leonard and Penny trooped in. "Hey, guys, how is it going?" Penny asked, glancing at everybody with her eyes lingering on Henry. They didn't know how much Henry may or may not have told them about his relationship to Penny.

"It's going fine." Henry said, not certain what to say to her.

"Yeah, we've just been eating and talking, introducing ourselves to Henry." Howard remarked, nodding. "Nice kid." Penny and Leonard winced, half certain that he was referring to Henry being Penny's kid.

"Thanks." Henry said, rolling his eyes. He wished people wouldn't refer to him in the third person like he wasn't even there.

"So, um…is everything all right?" Amy asked, noticing some tenseness between the couple.

"It's going to be okay, we hope." Leonard said, nodding. "We're going to get Henry back home and patch things up with his parents, set everything straight."

"Really?" Henry said.

"What do you mean by that?" Bernadette asked.

"Oh, that's good, I suppose. Have a nice, safe trip." Sheldon said, unconcerned.

"That's it? You're not going to say anything else?" Leonard asked Sheldon.

"They don't know." Penny added, glancing around.

"Are you coming back home with me to Storybrooke?" Henry asked. "Mom?" He decide to break the silence.

Almost everyone else in the room gasped, and Howard started choking before Bernadette slapped him on the back. "Mom?" Amy asked, staring up at Penny. "Is this true?"

"Yes, I gave him up for adoption sometime ago." Penny said, lowering her head.

"Oh, my lord." Sheldon said, shaking his head. "I never figured that you…well, I thought it was a possibility that somewhere along the way, you might have conceived, but-"

"Sheldon, please." Leonard huffed. "Let's not get into a biological discussion right now."

"Yeah, that would be rude." Raj remarked, picking at his food as he wondered if his tongue might have slipped too much about Penny and Leonard's relationship in front of Henry. Poor kid.

"He belongs back home with his adopted parents, though. He just came here from the other side of the country to find me." Penny said, nodding before she turned to him.

"The other side of the country?" Howard said, gaping. "That could mean…child endangerment or kidnapping charges, right?" Some of the others gasped at that.

"I didn't mean for you to get into trouble on account of me." Henry managed to say. "I'll go back home and I'll tell mom and everybody that I'm all right and you had nothing to do with this, but can you please come back home with me?" He asked. "You're just as much my mom as she is. You deserve the chance to see me at least once or twice, don't you?"

"Of course I'll come back home with you, Henry, just to get everything straightened out. But I can't stay there long, you know that, right?" Penny asked him. "I have my life here, and you have your life there, and it's better for you, Henry, if you just stick it out there."

"Yeah, I guess so, but what about a couple of weeks?" Henry asked, looking up at her. "Just two weeks?"

"Yeah, come on, give the kid two weeks!" Raj said. "You owe him that much already!"

"Two weeks?" Penny asked and then nodded. "Sure, yeah, I can stay there for two weeks or so. Leonard?" She asked. "Will you come and stay with me for that long?"

Leonard hesitated, but finally he said, "All right, I'll be there for you." Some of the others smiled to hear that.

"Wonderful." Henry said.

"Two weeks!" Sheldon gasped. "You can't be away from work, Leonard, for two weeks! You know it's a sensitive time of year, what with the board review and whatever else! You can't be away for so long or else you could lose your job. And what about me? Stuck for two weeks without anyone sensible to talk to about work?"

"What about me?" Amy asked, glaring at Sheldon. "You can talk to me about your work or whatever else that concerns you, I'll listen. It's part of the relationship contract, after all."

"Relationship contract?" Henry said.

"Don't even ask." Leonard told him.

"I know that, Amy, I wrote the thing myself." Sheldon remarked. "But still, it's not like you are my professional colleague with whom I do experiments with. You don't know as much as Leonard here does about my work, and you certainly can't help me with proving my theorems."

"I can still be there for moral support, but you don't even know what that means." Amy growled.

Sheldon frowned. "I know what that means. He's my moral support, just as much as you are mine and I am his." The others gaped at him.

"Sheldon…that's actually kind of sweet of you." Amy said, smiling.

"It is? Well, if he's gone for two weeks from work, then I might as well follow him myself to make sure that he doesn't get into trouble or stays there longer than he should." Sheldon said.

"Sheldon, please don't go." Leonard said.

"I have to, Leonard. It's for your welfare as much as it is for mine." Sheldon insisted. "Mine matters more than yours, of course."

"Me, too!" Amy cried. "I'm going for moral support."

"Oh, heck with it!" Howard cried. "Why don't we all go?"

"Oh, a trip." Bernadette's eyes widened. "That sounds like fun. We can all be there for Henry and Penny and Leonard!"

"When are we leaving?" Raj asked. "I have to pack and board Cinnamon…" The others started arguing and discussing the trip they would have to take.

"Welcome to the club, kid." Penny remarked, staring down at Henry. "It's one crazy big family."

"I like it." Henry said, smiling. "I like it a lot."

More to come!