Okay, this started as a tiny writing excercise that wouldn't leave me alone. It was gut-wrenchingly difficult at times and almost too easy at others. I hope you all like it.

Disclaimer: I do not own this show even a little tiny bit. If I did, when Penny woke Sheldon up at the end of "The Work Song Nanocluster", it would have been to take him to bed.

A/N: Okay, this started as a tiny writing exercise that wouldn't leave me alone. It was gut-wrenchingly difficult at times and almost too easy at others. It's also ridiculously full of pop culture references. No copy-right infringement is intended on any of them. Also, doing this amount of research for a fanfic is more than slightly insane. My brain hurts. I hope you all like it!

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14.

Penny learned at a young age that boys are trouble. She fell quickly, recklessly. When it was brought up two years later by her older brother she brushed it off as nothing, but it was something. It was everything.

His name was Tobin, and his eyes were the darkest she'd ever seen. He was tall and charming and friends with everybody. She would never admit it, even back then, but the day she found him kissing her best friend Lindsey she sobbed into her pillow for hours, her face smeared with her own tears and mucus.

Upon telling this story to Sheldon one night, he turns toward her, his movement looking as unnatural as ever and asks her if he was named after Keynesian economist James Tobin.

She has no answer.

5,309.

She's a grad student. Her name is Jenny. She's very smart and very hyper. He would liken her to a golden retriever, but has been told that's rude.

He still thinks it anyway.

At first he doesn't notice her at all. He has to be told by Wolowitz that she's watching him. For two weeks straight, she sits two tables over, eating a carton of yogurt and surreptitiously watching him from over the top of 'Infinite Jest'. He feels uncomfortable about it.

Rajesh informs him that she's 'hot' and that he should 'go for it'. Go for what, Sheldon isn't entirely sure. He has no intention of ever even talking to the girl. He knows how this works now for the most part. Idol worship gives way to domineering craze. Perhaps a female who needs to be part of his brilliance is not optimal.

On the ninteenth day, she approaches and promptly babbles about him to him. He smiles tightly and regards her coolly. When she leaves, Leonard asks why he behaved so badly. All Sheldon can think to say is he observed that her eyes were brown, not green.

Even he doesn't understand that one.

7.

Penny had absolutely known when she was young that she was destined to marry Brad Pitt. She remained convinced that when she graduated from high school and left Nebraska behind for the sunny promised land of California, Brad would promptly drop Gwyneth like a sack of rocks and beg for Penny's undying love. He was perfect, exactly what she had always envisioned as her ideal mate.

She grimaces at the scene on the screen. After all these years, she still gets queasy. Not helping at all is Howard to the right of her, explaining how only a couple of these murders are really completely feasible. Penny closes her eyes and turns away from the slight man, glancing at Sheldon out of the corner of her eye. His eyes dart to the television quickly, so quickly that if she hadn't been looking, she never would have seen. She turns her face more fully toward him, but he steadfastly stares past her. Not breaking his lock on the screen, he leans forward, taking a sip from his water bottle. Penny unconsciously follows his movement, her own gaze moving to the table as he replaces the bottle. There, in his takeout container sits one onion ring, pushed off to the side.

When she glances back toward him, this time he just stares back at her. His right eye twitches slightly.

Howard intones the cool factor of Brad Pitt.

Cool, but maybe not ideal.

68,104.

It's Friday, Friday is always vintage game night. Tonight, they will be enjoying the classic Super Nintendo version of MarioKart. It was what they played the second Friday of every third month. Howard was always Yoshi, Raj played Bowser. Sheldon drove as Toad, maintaining his superior cornering skills. Leonard was perpetually Mario, claiming going classic was the way to go. Sheldon thought it had something more to do with Penny always choosing to play as the Princess.

But the Princess would not be joining them this evening.

She'd left two days ago, heading for the plains of home for her younger cousin's graduation. She'd missed one pizza, three episodes of 'Star Trek', four steamed dumplings, seven games of boggle, and nine inappropriate comments about her 'rack', as Howard put it.

He feels uneasy acknowledging how he was keeping time this week.

It doesn't stop him from assessing that in one episode of 'Dr. Who', two helpings of pad thai, five chess matches and three 'X-Men' movies, his Princess will be back.

300.

His name had been Jared. He'd been king of their high school. They had been dating for four months, or whatever the equivalent of dating in rural Nebraska was. She cheered at his football games and then they drank beer with their friends in Corey Waldner's corn field.

Her first time had been one of those evenings. Early in November, it had been freezing in the back of his pick-up. He hadn't really seemed to know what he was doing, despite having dated Carmen Miller for two years before her. Rumors had been swirling the year before that Carmen had been forced to get an abortion by Jared. Penny had pushed those thoughts aside as his clumsy fingers pressed against her anxiously.

And that's the memory she has, Sometimes she envies Spock never having put himself through that painful of an encounter. Penny is sure it's creepy to think about it, and if she delves to far in, she has to pull herself back. But she still finds herself wondering if he will ever deem someone special enough to experience that part of him.

362,436

He stares at his computer screen, trying to focus on his ongoing discussion with XanderLuva85 about the so-called merits of the Spiderman movie trilogy. He can't .

She's standing behind him, doing Wii Fit Yoga. He knows every time she reaches upward, her shirt raises an inch, revealing an enticing stripe of skin. He doesn't know why it excites him so much. He's seen her in way less. Something about the fact that she's wearing an old Gap t-shirt and sweat pants and not trying to be at all sexy is making her seem so…..sexy that he cannot find it in him to continue his argument with some girl who obviously has an ill-advised crush on Tobey Maguire.

He turns around in his chair and watches her for a moment, taking in the line of her, the curve of her body. She smiles at him serenely before closing her eyes. He seizes his opportunity and studies her in a way he's never allowed himself before. When she opens her eyes again and catches him staring, she winks.

He quickly excuses himself to the bathroom and doesn't come out until after she's gone back to her own apartment.

88.

She walks across the hall and back half a dozen times before actually finally getting the nerve to enter.

She really doesn't need to be nervous. He isn't even there. He went to the grocery store with Howard because they were running low on milk and he was afraid he wouldn't have enough to pour over his shredded wheat in the morning. Penny takes all this in from Leonard, who doesn't even really glance up from the movie he's watching. Sighing softly, she flops down on the middle cushion, not feeling as if she could muster the courage to sit in his spot.

She knows something has shifted. It was subtle, non-existent to someone who wasn't looking for it, but she had been. Without even realizing it, she'd been waiting for something to change.

Penny tries to focus on Lea Thompson never having seen purple underwear before and not on how dark she'd seen his eyes get last night.

It doesn't really work.

255.

He doesn't always mean to. It just feels that if he knows something someone else doesn't, it should be his responsibility to pass it on. Chelsea Matthews seemed to like it in the first grade. They sat next to each other for the first half of the year. She would rest her face on her hand and just listen to him talk during craft time. When he was done, she would always turn to him and tell him he was smart. She wore the same ladybug barrette everyday. She had freckles on her nose. She always colored meticulously.

The second half of the year, she got moved next to Jimmy Schwartz. Sheldon heard only days later that they'd kissed during recess. He sat next to Gretchen Bartlett, who ate her crayons and kicked him in the shins when he tried to tell her why she had to stay inside the lines. But he didn't stop. He needed to explain things.

Which is what he's trying to do one evening when Penny mentions how she hasn't really seen the stars since she left Nebraska. Before he even thinks about it, he's spouting off information on how many days are in a lunar year and suggesting that she talk to Koothrappali if she's really taking an interest in astronomy. She raises an eyebrow at him and chuckles slightly before rising and reaching out her hand to take his plate from him.

Their fingers touch and he silently chants to himself to stay in the lines.

4,077.

It's a regular Tuesday. She's working the dinner shift. They boys come trooping in at exactly seven. Always exactly at seven. She greets them all with a grin and gets 'hellos' back from all of them, save Raj. She doesn't bother handing them menus anymore, there's no need. She recites their order to them without even looking up from the pad she's scribbling on. When she does look up, she finds Sheldon looking at her with a strange expression on his face. Well, stranger than normal at least. His smile is soft, eyes bluer than she remembers them being.

Her stomach flips, making her breath catch. She excuses herself and finds reasons not to linger at their table for the rest of their visit.

Because, seriously. What the hell?

When she arrives home later, they are entranced by Radar telling everyone Colonel Blake's plane went down. She quietly approaches, realizing they left her seat open for her. The middle cushion, right next to him. For some reason, it's always next to him. She settles in as gently as she can. Their knees touch and her stomach does that thing again.

She sees it coming this time, but is completely unprepared for it anyway.

11,235,813,213,455.

He watches, knowing that if he looks long enough, he will see it.

He always does.

The equations on his board swim in his vision for a moment. He's close, he always is.

She rustles behind him, re-settling herself on their couch. Closer and closer to his spot. Always testing him, even when she wasn't meaning to. He feels her eyes on his back for several long moments before she finally addresses him. She asks what he's working on. Trying not to roll his eyes, he turns toward her, explaining briefly about electrons and their magnetic force through time. When she inquires about the goofy looking loop she recognizes from high school math class, he pauses.

And he watches. Because if he looks long enough, he always sees it.

She gives him a small smile and any lectures about the golden ratio die on his tongue.

187.

When Penny was twenty-three, she fell in love. Hard. And like any good love story, she didn't see it coming at all. And like any tragic love story, it hadn't ended well. She had been too sure of herself, too headstrong. Her aggression with men had always caused minor problems, but this was one that was unsolvable.

There's no solution to an equation that doesn't exist. Equations need two variables, just one doesn't cut it.

He'd said no, flinched away. And so she had fled.

She stares out her window, not really taking in anything she sees.

The tears cause her vision to blur significantly. But she can't stop them from streaming down her face, her breath shaking into hiccups.

Penny now knows without a doubt that she is in fact crazy. The Penny she was five years ago would never have… Hell, the Penny from six months wouldn't have. For better or worse, he'd changed her. But for what? She feels a bitterness rise inside of her and she tries not to resent the ache it leaves.

Pain is supposedly great for an actor.

3.

As a small child, he'd slept in a tiny room adorned with plastic glow-in-the-dark stars. They had covered the walls, the ceiling. His mother had gotten them from the drugstore one day and insisted on putting them up on his otherwise stark white walls. He'd hated them, because they weren't in any order. She'd simply scattered them about, not taking into account anything she may have known about constellations.

By happenstance, she had re-created Orion's Belt just above his bookcase. At night, when she would turn off his light, she'd tell him to imagine he was flying, soaring through the sky. The idea had always terrified him. Why would someone want to just go floating around with no safe connection to what they have always known?

He calls his mom that afternoon and after stammering for several minutes of stilted conversation, brings up the topic he's afraid to even whisper to anyone else. What is happening to him? Is it making him weak? Stupid? Average?

She assures him he isn't weak or stupid and adds that being a little more average occasionally wouldn't kill him. He rolls his eyes so hard she can hear him.

Then she asks him the question he's been subconsciously waiting for someone to ask him since he spent an hour hanging underwear on a telephone wire. The answer is out of him before he even has an opportunity to think about it.

For once, not thinking is the right decision.

501.

He's wearing jeans.

She's sure she's never seen him in jeans. She didn't think he even owned jeans. She didn't think he was even aware jeans existed. When Penny points that out to him, he waves her off, claiming his mother sent them to him. Penny is only slightly disturbed at how cute she finds that.

Standing in his living room in the dark wash denim and brown button-down shirt, he looks more normal, more human than she's ever seen him. In another moment, he ruins it slightly by pulling his tuning fork tee over his head and meticulously smoothing it down over his narrow waist.

But it doesn't necessarily ruin it. He just looks more …Sheldon.

And she finally stops pretending that it isn't much better.

525,600.

Katie Harper had a mess of brown curls. She rode a pink bike with a basket on the front of it and training wheels on the back. Whenever she rode it past their trailer, Sheldon's eyes unconsciously followed her. Katie was the first girl Sheldon ever knew was alive. She would sometimes walk by with her dad and her small yorkie terrier on the way to the playground. She always hummed the same song. When he asked her why, she said it made her feel happy. She was humming it the night she kissed him, hurriedly, under a picnic table at the annual 4th of July festival. He had been complaining about his mother's jello salad. He stared at her blankly for a moment, too long a moment. She quickly rose and scurried away from him under the blaze of fireworks. He'd looked up at the blue explosion and quietly hummed to himself.

When he hears the song coming from across the hall one day, he can't stop himself from going over. He finds the door wide open. She's dancing spastically, arms akimbo, her surprising sweet voice carrying across the room. It's free and uninhibited and wonderful. He thinks if the casting producers who went to her workshop could see this, she might already be a star.

He has a flash of a memory of strawberry-flavored lips and sweaty hands covered with dirt before retreating silently to his own apartment.

69.

Kurt had been her first real true boyfriend. She'd met him on a Tuesday at Starbucks and by Friday had been sleeping with him. He was so tall and muscled. She loved feeling the hate and jealousy of other women whenever they went out together. He'd been an object of lust for many a female. Their sex life had been intense. Vigorous, lengthy sessions had been a daily occurrence in that first year. Penny had learned only a couple weeks into their relationship that she really loved sex.

There had been plenty of others since, many mind-bending experiences with guys whose names she can't remember any more. They've all faded away.

She stares at herself critically in the mirror, turning to see how the fire-engine red bra looks from the side. Satisfied, she slips it off and back onto the hanger. Putting her own clothes back on, she steps out of the dressing room and walks over to the rack she'd pulled her find from. Grabbing the matching panties are a no-brainer. She may as well go all out.

After all, it is going to be her first time making love to any one.

0.

He hates himself for even thinking it for the better part of a month. He knows, he knows, he knows better.

It's impossible.

It's ludicrous.

It's unhealthy.

He researches it on the internet, trying to find any other causes.

Because it's insane.

Leonard tells him it's okay, he gets it.

Sheldon wishes he'd explain it to him then.

Because it isn't okay.

It's dire.

It's love.

2.

Eli Burke was the smartest man Penny had ever known. He was intriguing. He told stories. He was a Civil War buff and he believed in the Grassy Knoll Conspiracy. He had them read the works of Poe and Wilde and Tennyson aloud in class. They were always assigned books that made them stammer nervously during discussion. How were they supposed to talk about things like drugs and sex with this man in his form-fitting Dockers? It was the class the Penny retained the most knowledge of after high school. She had listened to every word Eli Burke ever said. He was, after all, the smartest man Penny had ever known.

Until now. She watches Sheldon sometimes, when he doesn't realize it. She sits, pretending to be engrossed in her issue of Vanity Fair or re-reading 23 of 'The Flash' because she knows he's going to quiz her on it. She watches as he works at his board, writing furiously for a moment before stopping to stare at it intently. She likes the way his fingers curl around the marker he holds. They look longer and stronger than she would ever guess. One time she thinks about them being used to other purposes. She's sure it's an accident.

Just in case it isn't, Penny reads her Vanity Fair on her own couch for a month.

4,815,162,342.

He tries to focus on the screen, willing the characters to fully engage him. It doesn't work. His eyes move to the right, settling on the empty cushion before looking back at the television. He doesn't know much. The guy's name is Eric, and he apparently looks just like the prince from 'The Little Mermaid'. She says he's smart, but Sheldon doubts it because when he asked her if this 'Eric' could recite pi to twelve hundred places, she just stared at him blankly.

He knows she met her prince at the overly-romantic Walgreens. Their hands had brushed while both were reaching for a Magic Bullet. He feels his chest twinge and silently blames it on the amount of curry he ingested for dinner.

She enters the apartment during the first commercial break, begging to be filled in on what she missed. He feels off-kilter, but then she is landing next to him and tucking herself into a cross-legged position. Their knees bump. He offhandedly asks about her date and she replies airily that she had told him the fate of Locke was more important than listening to a demo of his band.

Five minutes later Sheldon needs to go to the bathroom, but her knee is still pressed up against his thigh. He doesn't move for another thirty-seven minutes.

711.

Darrell had been Penny's brother's best friend growing up. He had long hair like a hippie, even though it was the nineties. He wore the same black sweatshirt every day. He collected comic books. On Saturday nights, he met up with his friends and smoked pot in the parking lot of the drugstore. He tried to grow a mustache, which looked ridiculous. When she pointed that out, he grabbed her and rubbed it against her cheek. It had been her first kiss. She'd had to brush her teeth afterward.

She finds herself scanning through racks, searching for the series he had read. When she asks Sheldon, who arrives at her side, his two copies of the new issue of 'Superman' presumably in the plastic bag he holds, he raises his eyebrows at her. The tale of Daniel Dyce, crime-fighting felon is hard to come by, he tells her. If he's impressed that she knows it exists at all, he keeps it to himself. Then, he unsurely pulls a book out of his sack and hands it to her, declaring he thinks it is a good place to start. It's the first issue of 'Archie Digest'.

When she looks up at him, he gives her the smile that reminds her of a small child and she grins back. It was indeed a very good place to start.

109.

He had all of the state capitals memorized by the time he was four, could point out every country in Africa. By the time he was six, he knew the Table of Elements backwards and forwards. He had spent the first fifteen years of his life having people tell him constantly how bright, how amazing he was.

He knew he was smart, so what was the point of them telling him that? He was the smartest person most of them would ever meet. That wasn't arrogance, it was truth.

He'd lived in Germany. He knew everything there was to know about String Theory.

It isn't until his twenty-seventh birthday however, that he realizes he doesn't really know anything. For instance, the look she gives him as she refills his probably not so virgin Cuba Libre is unreadable to him. He's seen it before in movies. He launches into the origin of said cocktail, rapidly explaining to her that it was concocted as a toast to the West Indies. She smiles evenly at him, her emerald eyes sparkling at him. Yes, his drink had definitely not been virgin.

She grinningly accuses him of monologuing. Before he can argue this, she is right in front of him. She murmurs happy birthday against his lips before kissing him.

He breathes in. Atomic number 8, non-metal.