Hope you have fun with this one :)
Disclaimer: If I owned these characters, I'd be rich. But I'm not, so...
"Wow, you look amazing." Leonard commented and stepped in behind Penny, helping her put on the necklace.
She had chosen a long, beige dress with a slit on the left side going up to her upper thigh and it was tight enough to accentuate her figure while loose enough to hide her still present remaining baby fat. It was shoulder free, the dress ending at just over her breasts, allowing for a good showing of her cleavage but since her breasts were still bigger than before the pregnancy due to the breastfeeding, she hoped she wouldn't flash anyone.
"Thank you." she replied to his comment. "I just hope the girls won't escape their clutches."
"Nice analogy." he grinned. "But at least you don't have to be ashamed."
"Very funny. As if you want other people to see my breasts."
"True." he said and finally managed to click the chain of the necklace shut. "Why do people make such small clasps?"
"You just have clumsy fingers." she laughed and did a last-minute check of herself. "All done."
"I'm really nervous." he admitted.
"Come on, don't be." she said. "You look great and you're getting the prize. You don't even have to give a speech, so why be nervous."
"I'm afraid I'll drop the medal when they hand it to me because my hands will be sweaty."
"Leonard, look at me." she ordered and he turned towards her. "You will do great. You're getting a Nobel prize! Your Nobel lecture last month was a smash hit and all everyone except Sheldon gave you a standing ovation. So don't be afraid. And just remember, right now, Sheldon will be sitting in his office, steaming about the fact that you are on a stage, receiving a prize that he wants above all else."
"That is an uplifting thought." he grinned as Penny put on her overcoat. "Lets go."
He linked his arm through hers and took the crib with their sleeping son with the other and together they walked to the elevator, riding it down to find a spacious car waiting for them. They entered the backseat and put the seat belts on, letting their driver transport them to the Stockholm Concert Hall, the afternoon traffic heavy enough to make them drive slowly.
"How long is this event going to be again?" she asked.
"Well, the award ceremony will probably take around two hours, the dinner is slated to take at least four." Leonard replied.
"Am I glad they have provided daycare. Although I am still a little apprehensive with leaving our two month old baby with strangers."
"Come on, it will be fine. He won't be the only kid there, not even the only baby." Leonard said. "You know we can't have him with us the entire time."
"I know." she sighed.
"Hey, you managed a whole night and morning without him. You will make it through a few hours."
"Well, we had people we know and trust watching him and I was very... distracted during the night and morning."
"Distracted you say?" he laughed.
"Yeah, when you do your magic, I can't concentrate on anything else." she poked her tongue out at him.
"Huh, maybe we find a storage room or cleaning closet backstage for some distracting."
"Leonard!" she said shocked but seeing him grin. "Stop giving me ideas."
"Hey, I thought about us joining the mile high club but with our son next to us..." he let the sentence trail off with a smile.
"Now you're just torturing me." she pouted and Chris let out a small coo. "Yes sweetie, you keep agreeing with me." she directed at her son in baby talk.
Leonard held out his index finger and Penny watched with pure love as Chris' tiny hand closed around it. Leonard smiled a smile of equally strong love as Penny felt as he kissed his son's forehead before he lifted his head and pursed his lips, with Penny going the rest of the way to kiss him.
"Oh, someone seems hungry." she commented as she watched Chris attempting to suck on the tip of Leonard's finger.
"Wait, I think I have that bottle in the bag." Leonard said and started rummaging around their bag.
"Save it for later, we might need it." Penny told him and lifted Chris out of the crib, holding him in the crook of her arm before opening her coat and pushing down part of her dress until her right breast was free so she could steer him on it.
Chris' lips closed around her nipple and he started to suck hard until the white liquid he desired came out and into his mouth. Penny giggled again, the feeling so strangely familiar from even before she was a mother.
"You're still giving him the right one." Leonard chuckled.
"I still have to even out your predisposition to go left all the time." she winked again. "I bet you're glad our driver is a woman."
"I think a male wouldn't have tried to stare."
"What do you mean?"
"Howard told me two weeks ago that he never looked at women when they breastfed, he was totally grossed out by it. And if Howard is grossed out by something..."
"You mean, then every man won't look?"
"Well, I'm sure there are some people who might like this but not all."
"Sweetie, I like that you're so cavalier about this but believe me, a guy looks because he wants to catch a glimpse at the woman's breast before the baby is on it." Penny said.
"Well, if you say it like this, then yeah, I'm glad our driver is a woman." he chuckled again.
"Finally full?" she asked her son as he stopped feeding.
Without a word being needed, Leonard put a large towel over his left shoulder and let Penny hand Chris over to him. He put Chris against his shoulder and started to tap his back softly until they both heard the audible burp and Leonard's towel precaution was proven to be a good idea again when Chris expelled a small amount of milk along with the air.
He handed Chris back to Penny who put him back into the crib again as Leonard wrapped the towel up again, putting it into a plastic bag to prevent any of Chris' liquid burp to contaminate its surroundings. It was another sign of how well they functioned together.
After several more minutes, the car stopped at their destination, the driver letting them out before they could open the doors themselves. Leonard stepped out first, receiving the mobile crib from Penny before helping her out of the car as well. They looked across the street where a red carpet was rolled out for the Nobel guests.
"Come on, lets go." Leonard said and they headed into the building they stood in front of.
"God dag." the young woman said, smiling brightly at them.
"God dag." Leonard said, making Penny wonder why they were talking about a deity. "Engelsk." he added, pointing to himself and Penny.
"Oh, good day. My name is Ulrika." the woman introduced herself in heavily accented English, making Penny realize that Leonard had greeted her in Swedish.
"Hi." Leonard greeted her. "I'm Doctor Hofstadter, this is my wife Penny."
"Ah, you're here for the Nobel ceremony childcare." Ulrika smiled.
"Yes." Penny told her, apprehension visible on her face.
"Don't worry, we have almost twenty children here. The building is heavily guarded tonight because one of the children is part of the royal family. Only extended family but still prominent enough. Therefore every nurse here has been vetted deeply and nobody but parents of children here are allowed past this point."
"Oh, okay." Penny gave out a relieved sigh. "I fed him a few minutes ago, so he shouldn't get hungry any time soon but if he does, there's a self-heating bottle in the bag. But you might have to change the diaper. There are several in the bag as well."
"No problem." Ulrika said and Leonard handed her the crib with the sleeping Chris, receiving a marker in return so they could get him back later.
Penny kissed her son on the forehead and left the building with Leonard, walking past several people in suits with earpieces and bulges under their jackets on their way out. They got back into the car and the driver drove around the building once so she could let them out again in front of the concert hall so they could make the big entrance.
Twenty-one months ago:
"Leonard, where are you?" Penny asked into her phone after her fiance had picked up her call.
"At work of course, why?" came the reply.
"Well, I'm standing inside your lab and you're not here."
"Oh right, I forgot to tell you. I had to move to a bigger lab. Just exit the building through its main entrance, take a right, walk half a mile straight and enter the blue building with a six above the door."
"And then?"
"Inside the building, go right, down the stairs and then simply straight until you come to the third junction, then you should see an open double door."
Penny did as she was told, walking the distance and entering the building in question. She walked down the stairs as Leonard had said and then a straight line until she came within earshot of a lab way before she reached the junction Leonard had mentioned. When she closed the distance, she saw Sheldon standing around the corner, watching around it like a spy trying to hide from prying eyes.
"Hey Sheldon, what are you standing out here for?" she asked when she reached him, upon which the lanky physicist let out a loud scream of surprise before running away without saying a word.
Shaking her head at his reaction, she turned the corner and reached the doors to the lab, seeing almost a dozen people working on various things and Leonard directing others to do other things. He saw her and mentioned her over but as she walked into the large room, another lab technician in a white coat barred her way.
"I'm sorry miss, you can't be in here." the man said.
"It's okay Martin, that's my fiance." Leonard called from the other side of the room.
Penny walked past Martin, giving Leonard a kiss which caused some of the workers, both male and female to look at them with envy, although Penny didn't know whether it was envy of their relationship in general or envy of their respective partners.
"When did you move into another lab?" she asked.
"When several of the highest ranked physicists in the world looked at my paper and said that I'm onto something."
"Really? Who looked at your paper?"
"Stephen Hawking was the most famous. He came by personally as a surprise and we had a small meeting where President Siebert said I could choose any lab and any grad student or other scientist that I want to help with this project. And now I'm standing here, ordering people around. Who would have thought?" he chuckled.
"Hey Hofstadter, the results were positive. Though I weally wish we could keep the pwocess going for more than a miwisecond." Barry Kripke said loudly as he entered the lab.
"Great job Barry." Leonard said. "But I think we don't have the technological means yet to keep the process going for longer without destroying the objects we use."
"Hey Woxanne." Barry greeted Penny.
"My name is still Penny." she said.
"And she is my fiance." Leonard added.
"Oh, that's my cue to back off." Barry said and turned back to Leonard. "The tempewaturs exceeded what our equipment can pick up."
"Not surprising." Leonard sighed. "We'd need really sophisticated stuff to measure a temperature like those inside the sun in that short amount of time."
"But that costs insane amounts of money." Kripke interjected. "We'd need to build a test reactor and the matewiels are expensive."
"I know." Leonard sighed again. "We just need to work with what we've got. I already attached a note about the fact that today's technology isn't up to the challenge of everyday use."
"Hey, why was Sheldon spying on you?" Penny asked after a few seconds of silence.
"Cooper was here again?" Kripke asked. "Where?"
"He was standing around the corner over there." Penny pointed to the place where she had passed him. "Why?"
"Sheldon has been banned from this lab." "Leonard replied.
"Why?" she asked again.
"At first I asked him to be a part of the team. Of course, he began to act as if he was the leader and wanted to make changes, which culminated in an attempt to force me out and co-opt the work as his own."
"He wanted to steal your work?" Penny asked surprised.
"Yep. The team pushed him out of the room and President Siebert then told him to, and I quote 'stay the hell away from the lab and the team'. Since then he tried a few times to enter and sabotage us."
"Sabotage how?"
"Well, running in and changing a sign or two on our white boards, which would render the entire equation meaningless. He might have forgotten that we're all smart scientists who can find errors on a relatively small surface like a white board."
"Okay, one question." Penny interrupted. "Why is he still working here at all? I mean, at the university."
"Because we all here think it's pretty funny to see Sheldon in such envy. And since he doesn't do anything that can't be fixed in a few seconds, we don't worry his sabotage attempts."
"But when we have dinner with them, he seems so normal." Penny argued.
"I know. It's his way of saying work is work and it stays out of our leisure time."
"If I learned that a colleague was sabotaging my sales pitches by slipping me the wrong information, I would be furious and never want to have to do anything with that person."
"That's because you are very passionate and I love you for it." Leonard smiled.
"I love you too."
"Yeah, evewybody loves evewyone." Barry said and stalked away.
"Why are you here anyway?" Leonard asked.
"I wanted to surprise you for lunch. I brought a picnic basket."
"Where is it?"
"Oh, I left it in the car, didn't want to carry it around. But you're so busy so I guess we have to postpone that." she sighed.
"No, not at all." he said. "I'm heading out to lunch. Remember to never leave this room unguarded." he addressed the entire room.
Together, they went to her car and Penny got the basket from the backseat, carrying it with her left forearm while handing a large blanket to Leonard. They went behind the main administration building to a secluded area that only very few people ever visited and then onto the grass, spreading the blanket and making themselves comfortable. Penny rook out a vast assortment of healthy food, from vegetables to fruit, white bread and some pieces of meat.
As they leaned back and ate, Penny looked at her engagement ring and sighed. She needed to tell Leonard something but didn't know how he would react. The last thing she wanted was hurt him but his work depended on it.
"Sweetie, I wanted to talk to you about something." she started the conversation.
"About?" he asked and swallowed the food he had in his mouth.
"This." she said and pointed at her engagement ring.
"Uh... I... What..." Leonard stammered.
"Oh, no. No, no, no." Penny said quickly. "I don't want to cancel our engagement." she added and saw him almost collapse in relief.
"Then what?"
"I think we should postpone the wedding."
"We haven't even set a fixed date yet, how can we postpone?"
"To a point until your work is done. I mean, during the last three months you have worked a lot of nights, so much that I sometimes thought you were cheating on me."
"I know." he sighed. "If you really want that, we can postpone."
"Hey, I don't want that. I would love to get married today, if that were possible." she said and saw his thoughtful expression. "No Leonard, we're not getting married today or tomorrow. I want a big wedding with my family there."
"Fine." he huffed and then smiled. "But you have a lot of making up to do."
"Very well." she said seriously and then launched herself at him. Hopefully, nobody would think of coming into this area for the next ten to thirty minutes.
The present:
"We often award these prices to people who make great contributions in our respective fields. Yet dare I say that remarkably few of us have made truly world-changing breakthroughs that either did or could alter the future of all of humanity."
Penny listened to the laudation, pride swelling in her breast as she heard Doctor Higgs praise her husband and father of her son. Leonard's hand was holding hers as they stood behind the curtain, looking out at the stage. Penny felt a little overdressed to be standing somewhere where nobody could see her but they would get to a dinner later.
"You might have heard that there were anonymous letters concerning Doctor Hofstadter's work," Doctor Higgs continued. "saying that he doesn't deserve this award because the discovery was only the result of an accident."
"Anonymous my ass." Penny whispered to Leonard. "Sheldon is a dead man."
"Relax, the letters had no effect at all and caused more scorn at Sheldon, or the anonymous sender, than any doubt about my work, because it has proven to be valid." he whispered back and both turned back to continue to listen to Doctor Higgs.
"Yet what that person might have forgotten is the fact that a lot of important discoveries have been made by chance or after accidents, discoveries that have helped mankind. Think about Penicillin, discovered by Professor Fleming when mold had developed around a bacterial culture. The microwave oven, built by Percy Spencer after he worked with a vacuum tube and a magnetron. If he hadn't had a chocolate bar in his pocket that melted, he wouldn't have realized the potential of microwaves."
"Is that true?" Penny whispered to Leonard who nodded.
"Of course, Viagra was supposed to be a heart medication yet look how much it helped certain males." Higgs resumed, getting a laughter from the audience. "And let us not forget the namesake of this ceremony. Alfred Nobel himself allegedly discovered dynamite by accidentally dropping a vial of Nitroglycerin into sawdust. And while that my not be true, his discovery of blasting gel resulted from him cutting his finger on a piece of glass and using collodion to dress the wound."
"I had no idea that science was so much dependent on luck or chance." Penny whispered again, as Doctor Higgs continued the speech.
"You'd be surprised. Even Sheldon had a lucky break in some of his work because he left his white board out."
"Why? What happened?"
"It was the night I spent with Leslie." Leonard said, making Penny's mood darken for a second because of the thought of her husband having sex with someone else, although they hadn't been together then and she hadn't been better, parading guy after guy in front of Leonard while fighting her feelings him.
"What happened that night?" she asked.
"Relax, that was years ago." he smiled, seeing her thoughts in her facial expression. "Well, during the night or early morning, she went out to get a glass of water, saw his white board and fixed his equation. So, by leaving the white board out in the living room instead of taking it into his room, he had, by chance, progressed in his research."
"And now, without further ado, here's the recipient of this years physics Nobel prize, Doctor Leonard Hofstadter." Doctor Higgs ended his speech and the audience erupted in applause.
With a red face, Leonard went on the stage, standing next to the podium to receive the medal and the diploma directly from King Carl Gustav himself. Penny saw the king saying something to Leonard, who blushed even harder and Leonard pointed to her. The king waved at her, mentioning for her to come out on the stage as well and Penny walked out, stopping next to Leonard and linking her left arm through his while shaking the hand of the king and doing a small curtsy.
"I can see that Doctor Hofstadter didn't exaggerate when he said that you are the inspiration for his work." Carl Gustav said in almost flawless English.
"Thank you, your highness." Penny replied, almost too overwhelmed to speak by the attention.
After another minute of basking in the adulation, they went down the stage and into the front-row seats that had been kept free for them. Penny kept her arm linked through his, looking proudly at him and the medal he kept twirling in his hand, the diploma in its folder safely tucked between the armrest and his body.
Twenty-one months ago:
"I'm telling you, this project will inevitably fail." they heard Sheldon's voice say when they walked close to Doctor Gablehauser's office, with the door only leaned into the frame and not entirely closed.
"Doctor Cooper, you have complained to me numerous times now, tell me again why do you believe that Doctor Hofstadter's project will fail?" Gabelhauser returned.
"He's not invested in it enough. He divides his time between work and his ridiculous pursuit of bodily satisfaction with his fiance."
"You mean, he does what every other person does and has a life?"
"Correct. If he really was invested in his work as much as he should, he wouldn't do it. Eventually, he will make mistakes that will embarrass the university as a whole."
"Doctor Cooper." Gablehauser almost sighed the name in a matter of a man who had to deal with someone way too often. "The only mistakes the team made so far have been the result of your interference. I have told you before and I'm telling you again, stay away from that lab and the members of Doctor Hofstadter's team. If I get one complaint about you, I will give you latrine duty without gloves."
"You can't do that, this isn't the military." Sheldon objected.
"Doctor Cooper, you are dismissed." Gablehauser stated.
"Fine." Sheldon huffed and Penny could hear him come near the door.
She put her hand on the doorknob and waited for the pulling motion that indicated Sheldon trying to exit the room. As soon as it happened, she pushed strongly against it, as if to enter the room and was rewarded with a thud as the massive piece of wood hit Sheldon directly in the face.
"Ups, sorry Sheldon, I didn't see you there." she said innocently as she watched him writhe on the floor with his hands on his face.
"You did that on purpose!" he shouted through his hands. "Why else would you have come here."
"I did no such thing. Leonard gave me a tour and I wanted to say hello to his direct superior." she said, still acting innocent. "I think you should go see the nurse."
Almost in tears, Sheldon scrambled to his feet and ran out of the room. Penny looked after him and grinned widely, squeezing Leonard's hand and waving to Doctor Gablehauser with the other. She knew that this whole thing had probably been too hard but hearing someone, who was supposed to be a friend, trying to downgrade Leonard's work out of pure jealousy made her hackles rise.
"I love you so much." Leonard grinned.
"I love you too." she replied. "But I'm really beginning to not like Sheldon at all."
"How's the experiment going?" Gablehauser asked as he stood up to shake Penny's hand.
"We're doing data runs and getting good results. Unfortunately, we don't have equipment that can actually keep the reaction going for longer than a few milliseconds if even that."
"Would it have been too much for you to discover cold fusion?" Gablehauser asked with a smile.
"Maybe next time." Leonard laughed.
"What's cold fusion?" Penny asked.
"Fusion is the process that happens inside the sun, therefore the temperatures are insanely high. Cold fusion is the same but happens at room temperatures. If we could develop that, we wouldn't need specialized materials because everything we have right now can't stand those temperatures for any reasonable amounts of time." Leonard explained.
"But you're sure that the results you're getting, however brief, are positive?" Gablehauser asked again.
"Yes. Barry Kripke ran several and got positive results, other have as well." Leonard replied.
"Doctor Hofstadter, I'm proud of you. This might get you the Nobel prize. Feel free to requisition any lab, any office you want. Whatever you like, it's yours."
"Thanks. But I like my quiet lab and I really enjoy my work with lasers."
"I understand." Gablehauser said. "Now back to work."
"Understood." Leonard grinned and led Penny out of the office and back into the hallway to continue the tour.
"I hope you will continue these ridiculous pursuits of bodily satisfaction with your fiance." Penny whispered into his ear.
"If she likes to, we could pursue them in my old lab right now." he replied with a wink. "It's empty."
"Lead the way." she said and started to drag him along, despite not knowing where to go from here.
The present:
"Oh, hello." Ulrika greeted them as they entered the childcare building. "You want to pick up your child?"
"No." Leonard replied. "We still have the Nobel banquet to go to. We just wanted to check in, see if everything's okay."
"Sure." Ulrika told them. "We had to change his diaper an hour ago but other than that, he's the perfect little child. Sleeps like a baby."
Ulrika led them to a large window that let them look into the room where the various children were located. The babies and toddlers were separated from the slightly older ones so they could sleep in piece while the others played with the different toys provided for them.
They left the building again and got into the waiting car to be driven to the Stockholm City Hall for the banquet. The car ride wasn't that long, despite it being a convoy, since most of the laureates were using one of three luxurious buses and only those with kids were given the option of a separate car.
Once inside the building and out of the cold Stockholm air that had Penny cursing that she had become so accustomed to the California climate, they were seated an an appropriate table with two other laureates and their spouses, though none of the laureates were seated with another one of the same field to prevent them talking too much about their fields. One of the couples was a biologist and his wife, the other was a literature laureate with her husband.
They introduced each other and soon enough, the entree was served. After they ate, the other physicist who got the prize with Leonard, got on stage after being called on it by the man who managed the dinner procedure and gave a short speech, thanking his colleagues and talking a little about his life, making some of the people laugh.
"Why is he up there?" Leonard asked.
"Don't you know? You're next." the woman laureate said.
"What?"
"It's tradition that every laureate gives a short and lighthearted speech."
"Oh crap." Leonard muttered with panic in his eyes.
"And now, without further ado, the other winner of this years Nobel in physics, Doctor Leonard Hofstadter." the man said, making Leonard groan but he still went up the stage to the golf course applause of the audience.
"Well, if someone had told me that I would have to give a speech, I would have prepared one but now you will have to suffer through me winging it." Leonard started, getting some laughs already.
He continued to talk about his discovery, how it happened because he dropped his coffee into the machinery and luckily leaving out the part where she caused him to do that by telling him what she'd do to him later that day. Which she unfortunately couldn't do since he worked three days straight after the mishap. After about seven minutes, he thanked the crowd, who was laughing hard from the tales Leonard told about Sheldon and rejoined their table, giving Penny a quick kiss and wiping his brow with his napkin.
"My god, one minute more and I would have crapped my pants." Leonard said relieved.
"You did great sweetie." Penny grinned. "Listen to the noise, the entire room is laughing."
The rest of the dinner went normal, with the other laureates going on the stage to give their speeches, not one of them coming even close in terms of rapturous laughter that Leonard had achieved. The food was amazing too, the main course being without meat which pleased Penny to no end.
After just over four hours, the dinner had ended. The King himself went on the stage and congratulated everyone again before leaving, giving everybody the cue to leave the hall at their own leisure. As Penny and Leonard walked towards the exit, she looked up to the balconies where the audience was in the process of filing out.
As she wondered, why anyone would want to watch a bunch of prize winners eat for several hours, she saw a small commotion in the balcony, one audience member trying to get past some others who were walking slowly in front of him. She did a double take when that person looked familiar but before she could focus, the guy was gone.
"What is it?" Leonard asked her.
"I don't know, I thought I saw someone we know." she replied. "Never mind. Lets go get our son and then head to the hotel."
Leonard helped her into her coat and they went outside again, looking around to find their car. Their driver let them into the backseat, getting in front and starting to drive back to the childcare center. The drive took only a few minutes, and after arriving, they walked into the center past an exiting couple and were greeted by the manager again.
"Hello again." Ulrika said. "Coming to get your child?"
"Yeah." Leonard replied and handed her the marker he got when they dropped Chris off.
Ulrika went into the other room and they watched her through the window, picking up Chris from his bed and putting him back into the mobile crib before bringing him back out. She handed the crib to Penny and Leonard took out his wallet to pay whatever fee had to be paid but Ulrika waved them off.
"No money. The childcare service is part of the Nobel ceremony." she told them.
"Thank you." Leonard said and shook Ulrika's hand before taking the crib from Penny in one hand and her hand into the other.
As the last service, the driver drove them to their hotel, opening the door one last time to let them out. Leonard handed the driver a fifty dollar bill, which would be a rather large tip when converted into Swedish crowns. The driver thanked them and left as Leonard and Penny walked back into their hotel to be greeted by the night concierge.
"I'm so proud of you." Penny said as they walked down the hallway towards their room. "And tonight, we will have some real good celebration sex." she added with a grin.
"Well, then I hope our son will let us because..." he started but they were interrupted by a familiar voice they really didn't want to hear right now.
"Finally. Why did you take so long to get back here. I almost fell asleep on this hotel carpet." Sheldon said from his position on the floor next to their door.
He couldn't stay away :D
Review please :)