A/N: This chapter is once more coming a little late. That's because my lovely beta was awfully sick these days, and she still is but she took time to proofread this for me. She's the best. Show her some love. To Natalie!
The Catalan Interlude - Chapter 3: The Floral Lifeline Acquisition
"The audience is on fire tonight!" Lenny said, grinning widely, and Raj had to agree. There were good concerts, where people were visibly enjoying the set and themselves, and then there were amazing concerts, like Barcelona definitely was.
"The audience isn't the only thing that's on fire," Howard interjected, and Raj couldn't help but roll his eyes.
"Dude," he said, "you're getting really gross."
Howard winked, apparently not caring about Raj's opinion on the matter.
"Judge all you want," he said, "but I'm the one who is sleeping with my thousandth woman tonight."
Raj rolled his eyes a second time. "I can't even believe you're keeping track of the number of women you've slept with."
"What can I say? I'm a romantic," Howard shrugged, and Lenny and Raj both snorted derisively.
"Please. Sheldon is ten times more romantic than you are, and he's never been in a relationship."
Raj vigorously nodded at Lenny's observation, but before Howard could answer anything, Siebert, their manager, was beside them.
"Alright, guys," he said. "The encore is in ten seconds."
Raj looked around him and realised "Sheldon isn't back yet."
Siebert groaned. "I hate it when he does that, and he knows it."
"Which is why he's doing it," remarked Lenny. "You'd think that after three years as our tour manager, you'd know the guy."
Siebert seemed about to answer something when Sheldon suddenly popped out of nowhere.
"I was emptying my bowels," he said matter-of-factly, visibly missing the look of disgust on his band-mates' faces. Sometimes, Raj wondered how someone as weird and stuck up as Sheldon had even made his way to a rock band. It perpetually amazed him that Sheldon wasn't some sort of crazy scientist, always locked up in his office, solving equations after equations.
"Anyway," Siebert said. "You're going back on stage now."
They all nodded and Raj took a deep breath before following Howard and Lenny onto the stage. Even after years as the bassist of the biggest rock band in the USA, Raj was still a bit anxious about getting on stage. The truth was, had anyone told him when he was a child back in India that one day, he'd be touring the world playing rock music and making girls faint, he wouldn't have believed them.
Raj had had a lot of problems growing up. He had always been a quiet, shy child, and things had gotten worse as he had become older. His selective mutism had started around the age of fourteen, and if it hadn't been for music, he wasn't sure where he'd be in the present. Being a musician had helped him more than anything, especially the meds and psychoanalyses his parents, both doctors, had insisted he take as a part of his treatment. When he had had the chance to move to the United States to study the arts in California, he had jumped on the opportunity.
He had then met Lenny and Howard in school, both with problems of their own, even though none of them would ever admit it as readily as Raj did. But there was no doubt in his mind that Lenny had chosen this career to get back at his mother, another doctor who had made his childhood and his teenage years a living hell, and that Howard wouldn't have had such an obsession with women and sex if his father hadn't left his family when he was a kid. A few months later, when Lenny had decided he was tired of living in a dorm and wanted to share a flat with someone, they had met Sheldon and his whole new level of problems. The things that weren't right about him were so numerous that Raj didn't even know where to begin, but he too had taken an interest in music growing up, and, somehow, one thing leading to another, they had all started a band.
They only struggled a couple of years before Siebert, who had seen them playing in a café, realised they could be the next big thing and had managed to get them a record deal. Next thing they knew, Raj and the guys were the most popular rock band in America and touring all over the world.
It had all happened so fast, and there were times when it was still overwhelming. For the most part, it was an amazing experience and Raj didn't regret a minute of it, but sometimes, it was a bit too much. Big concerts were one of the things that still made him uneasy. It was like being naked in front of a crowd of ten thousand people, and often a bit too much for Raj.
But in the end, he loved his job. He was paid to play music with his friends, and he realised he was lucky. A lot of people dreamed of being rock stars without ever achieving it. He was one of the lucky few, and he couldn't complain. Besides, he had found a few tricks to be able to overcome his anxiety at the idea of being on stage.
Most of the time, he caught someone's eye in the audience, and only looked at them for the duration of the concert as if he were playing for only one person. It was something he had found to work extremely well. Sheldon claimed he hated that — that it made the whole thing much more personal than it was intended to be, but on the contrary, Raj found it a lot less intimidating and this trick helped him feel much more relaxed.
That night, he had decided to focus on a pretty, petite blonde on the first row. As he and the guys walked back on the stage under a veritable thunderstorm of applause, he spotted her again and suddenly felt better.
He never chose women, though, as most of the problems he had involved them, so he fleetingly wondered what it was about this one that had caught his attention like this. She was pretty, sure, but she wasn't insanely beautiful either, and Raj never really paid that much attention to a woman's physical appearance anyway. But there was something about her blonde curls, the floral dress hugging her petite figure and the sparkling eyes behind her glasses that made him feel good. Smiling at her, he grabbed his bass and went on playing the rest of the set.
ooo
As soon as their final song was over, Raj quickly walked back toward the backstage area, closely followed by Sheldon. Lenny and Howard usually lingered behind, saluting the audience one last time, but if he and Sheldon shared one thing, it was definitely their uneasiness at being surrounded by thousands of strangers. His sister, Priya, often mocked him, saying he had chosen the wrong career path if he was so ill-at-ease and that being in a popular rock band visibly wasn't enough to save him from being "a huge dork", but Raj really couldn't care less what she thought of him. (She had lost any right to make fun of her brother the day she had decided that dating Lenny was a good idea.)
"That was an amazing show, guys," Siebert said as soon as they were behind the scenes, and Raj smiled. It really had been.
"Of course it was," Sheldon snorted. "We're an amazingly talented band, people love us and most of them are actually clever enough to recognise perfection when they see it."
"Modest as always," Lenny laughed, coming back from the scene, and Howard, who was closely following him, added "He's right, you know. We are perfect."
Lenny rolled his eyes and said "Sure, sure."
Sheldon checked the time on his pocket watch – Raj was always amazed at the fact that Sheldon's idea of what made a man cool was a pocket watch, and even more when he remembered that he had actually set a trend and that pocket watches were now the must-have of the moment – and said "Alright, if we leave now, we can be back at the hotel before midnight."
But Siebert visibly had other plans. "It's the last date of the tour, Sheldon. You're not going anywhere. A lot of personalities and representatives of the labels are here to party backstage with you guys."
And before Sheldon could do anything but groan, Siebert was walking towards some Spanish starlet to welcome her to the party.
"Hmmm… she could be my Number Thousand," Howard said, his lecherous gaze lingering on the woman's breasts before drifting to the curve of her hip.
Lenny rolled his eyes, something Howard didn't miss, and he smirked when he added "Or maybe I could fuck that chick you invited to the show."
Lenny growled and said "No way. Penelope is a nice girl and she really doesn't need to be pestered by you."
Raj giggled. "Lenny and Penny, sitting in a tree, K. I. S. S. I. N. G."
Lenny blushed furiously and it was Howard's turn to roll his eyes. "I don't get you," he said. "You're so famous you could have literally anyone you want, but you crush on a scientist nerd of all people?"
"I don't expect you to understand," Lenny answered. "You're definitely not a romantic," he observed, echoing Howard's words from before the encore.
Raj could only agree. Even though the four of them had gotten to be very good friends over the years, two pairs had clearly emerged, and while Sheldon was Lenny's best friend, Howard was Raj's and he knew him better than anyone. And if Raj was sure of one thing, it was that nothing in Howard made him remotely close to being romantic. A sexual being? Yes, definitely, often to the point of being disgusting – the way he used his fame to sleep with women and then discard them like last week's leftovers was something Raj had a hard time excusing. But a romantic? Raj couldn't even begin to wrap his mind around the idea of Howard staying with a woman for more than three days, let alone be romantic with her. Sheldon was the only one of the four of them who had never been in a relationship, but even he often said that he'd get married before Howard.
"Besides," Lenny added as if wanting to defend himself and his taste in women, "Penelope is beautiful."
"Yeah, whatever man," he said, but then something caught his eye. Raj followed Howard's glaze and heard him snort derisively the moment he saw the person who was coming towards them.
"Oh yeah," Howard said sarcastically, "Very hot. I'd drove this Ferrari into oblivion like woah."
Raj had to agree with Howard. The woman walking towards them was obviously Penelope, for there was no way in hell someone who wasn't a science dork would dress like that. Her clothes seemed way too big for her, and if her green cardigan, her yellow mustard skirt and her red tights were of any indication, she visibly had a hard time coordinating colours. Her brown hair was pinned to one side with a single black hair clip and her stern expression seemed to be judging them from behind their glasses. She couldn't have been more out of place, but the backstage pass dangling around her neck meant that she had definitely been invited.
"This isn't Penelope," Lenny said, and then, just at this moment, the woman opened her mouth.
"Excuse me, I'm Amelia Farrah Fowler, you're The Big Bang Theory."
Her voice was strong and proud, like she exuded all the confidence in the world, and it came as something of a shock to Raj who had expected her to sound shy and mousy. A quick glance towards Howard and Lenny told him they were surprised too, their mouths slightly opened and their brows furrowed in confusion. Sheldon, however, didn't seem to notice the irony of a person looking like that sounding like this, and he answered.
"Hello Amelia Farrah Fowler," he said. "I'm sorry to inform you that we have no desire in interacting with fans and that you are more than welcome to come back to where you came from. Unless, of course, you are willing to let Howard, quote unquote, drive this Ferrari into oblivion."
"If that was slang, I'm unfamiliar with it. If that was literal, know that I have an aversion for cars and driving. In any case, I'm here because I'm being blackmailed by a hidden dirty sock and that I can't go back to where I came from since I'm just coming from the toilet for my scheduled emptying of the bladder."
"Interesting," Sheldon said. "I definitely share your aversion to soiled hosiery and can't do without a well-established bathroom schedule."
Amelia Farrah Fowler smiled a forced smile that looked a lot like Sheldon's and Raj was suddenly hit by how creepy this looked like.
"I understand someone named Lenny invited my friend Penelope and us to this concert," Amelia Farrah Fowler continued, "but I'll have you know that this is a poisoned gift. There is nothing I hate more than socializing with people I don't know."
Raj knew what was going to happen before it did. Expectantly, he looked at Sheldon, seeing something he couldn't quite place change on his friend's face.
"May I offer you a beverage?"
Amelia Farrah Fowler looked behind her, probably looking for her friends, but since they weren't anywhere in sight, she turned back to Sheldon and said "Tepid water, please."
Off they went towards the bar that had been set backstage for the after concert party, and Howard asked out loud the question he, Raj and Lenny had been thinking:
"Good God, what just happened?"
A/N: All right! Now that the Shamy met, we just need to introduce Bernadette to Raj and Howard, and then to reunite the whole gang, and the real fun will be starting. Thanks for reading, and as always, reviews are greatly appreciated. Thank you to everyone who has reviewed so far, by the way, and sorry if I don't answer: I'm just really bad at answering messages/reviews/e-mails/texts... But I actually read them all, and they mean a lot.
