4. Clash of the Titans
It was Big Boy Tuesday and they were making him go to the Cheesecake Factory. Absurd, but they were the ones with the car keys. Sheldon had no doubts that the entire disruption of his life was yet another frantic attempt of his best friend to achieve a sexual relationship with Penny. Again, absurd, but Leonard was a slave to his penis before all else.
Sheldon understood that it was a cultural convention to show support for these quests. He tried, but it was never ending and such relationships between others truly did not interest him.
He was sitting there, thinking that all he wanted was a Big Boy Burger.
"Oh, hey Leonard, hey guys."
Dr. Leslie Winkle was standing at the table, smiling amiably at all of them and asking Leonard if he would fill in for Elliot Wong in her string quartet. Sheldon heard it all with one ear, paid it no mind, finding the dilemma of his upset meal schedule much more important.
0000
Leslie liked Elliot, he was what she was looking for in a man: smart (but not too smart,) cute-enough, and easily controlled; plus he played cello, which was a bonus. She loved string music. When he called about his radiation problem, she was severely disappointed. Her life had been so comfortable. Work was going great, and she had managed to find and piece together a full quartet to keep her busy outside of the lab—either with music or with drinks.
She had the most fun with Elliot, but when he started getting to close, she just rotated to the viola player, and when that one got too attached, she moved on to the other violinist—one revolution through the group usually got her from one holiday season to the next. That is if they followed her rules and stayed casual for as long as possible. She knew them. She was happy. Or at least, happy-enough.
Now without Wong, she had a gaping hole in her calendar. The prospect of spending New Year's alone was too depressing to accept a temporary cancelation of the quartet. She would just have to find a new cellist and start him in the rotation.
The problem was there were not that many cellists in the area. So it had felt like a divine sign when she had walked into the Cheesecake Factory to see Leonard was there. She recalled learning he played a little cello, and he was handsome and willing, or was, so she approached him and invited him to join her group.
0000
Later that week, Sheldon stood frowning at Leonard's bedroom door. The muffled sounds of a Brian Adams CD came through it. A tie hung from the knob. Sheldon had seen the tie, of course, but had put his hand on the doorknob anyway, thinking nothing of it, but right before turning the knob, it occurred to him that maybe it was some form of semiotics, though rack his brain as he might, he could not recall ever learning what a tie meant.
He sought help. Penny's explanation enlightened him greatly; though distressed him equally so. There had been no advanced warning as agreed upon, and Sheldon had no plans to be elsewhere! Penny left him alone, and he sank onto his spot in an attempt to continue his life normally as advised to do.
It was no use. He had not been forced to share an apartment with a couple commencing in coitus in five and a half years. He found the disruption of the norm to be vastly unsettling. What was more he had far too much nervous energy, and he did not know what to do with himself. He had planned to spend the rest of the evening reorganizing his comic book collection, but there was no way he could be in his room right now, the wall between his and Leonard's room was far too thin.
He cursed his eidetic memory and his Vulcan hearing, and then cursed his body, wishing not for the first time he could be a creature solely of mind with no body to hinder him with hunger, exhaustion, pain, or—this.
He fell asleep on the couch watching the extended version of the Fellowship of the Ring and hours later, woke abruptly out of a dream that had involved far too many flowery-smelling things, elastic waist bands, and smooth legs, but also—strangely—violins, radiation hazard suits and Big Boy hamburgers.
He stood and wondered if Leslie was still in Leonard's room. On the way to the kitchen, he paused in front of his board. Something was wrong. A second look proved it. The sign in the beta function of quantum chromo dynamics had been changed!
Half of a panic attack later —saved by the realization that the mysterious change of sign had actually helped him—a much shorter brown haired and bespectacled figure breezed out of the hallway, leaving a waft of flowery scents in her wake as she quipped, "Your welcome!"
"You did this?"
"Yep," she said, "Now you can see that quarks are asymptotically free at high energies, pretty cool, huh?
"Who gave you permission to touch my board?"
"No one."
"I don't go into your house and touch your board!" He cried.
"There are no wrong equations on my board." She said evenly.
"Oh," The anger that was welling up inside of him was taking up too much space and making it hard to arrange his thoughts properly, "that is just so…" He could not find the word.
She left before he could.
"Inconsiderate!" He pulled out his phone and texted it to her.
She texted back:
Who is significantly behind whom in intelligence now, dumbass? Be sure to let them know I contributed when they nominate us for the Nobel Prize.
He replied:
There is no WE, and your name-calling combined with a reference to a comment I made six years ago tells me that you assume my anger had something to do with your being with Leonard. That is not the case.
PEOPLE DO NOT TOUCH MY BOARD!
She replied:
If I had not changed the sign, then you would have never solved the equation. The Committee will agree with me. It will be OUR Nobel Prize.
He replied:
You got lucky.
She replied:
Just admit I saw something you didn't.
He replied:
I would have seen it eventually.
She replied:
Maybe, but I saw it first.
He replied:
If you are so desperate for success that you are going to piggy back on my work and stake a claim where it does not belong, perhaps you have chosen the wrong career.
She replied:
My work is going more places than yours.
He replied:
Your work in high-energy electrons is a lost cause. You should just give it up and seek something at which you will succeed. In my opinion, you could never do better than giving up work completely and getting married. Perhaps your offspring will have what you lack, and will actually contribute to society. I am assuming laundry and other household chores are not TOO great a challenge for you.
She replied:
SEXIST JACKASS
As she pushed open the door to the bookstore with her shoulder, Leslie sent the last text, closed the phone and cursed Dr. Sheldon Cooper for coming into her life. After a fun and satisfying night with Leonard, Leslie had padded softly to the kitchen in search of water to find that the TV was on displaying the DVD menu of The Fellowship of the Ring. Sheldon was asleep on the couch.
She turned off the TV and got her water, trying not to think about what it would have been like to fall asleep in his arms again, this time waking up next to that sweet face in a natural and peaceful way.
It was too bad that the man was such an arrogant psychopath.
She had stopped in front of his whiteboard, curious about his work. Upon realizing what it was, she had been impressed that he would even think of taking on the problem, but that was an arrogant theoretical physicist for you. Perhaps it was because she came into it unexpectedly, with a fresh mind and a fresh eye, but she saw the error in the sign, fixed it, and went to bed.
She never thought he would be so outraged by it, and his tone as he shouted at her reminded her too much of something she preferred to keep off her mind, so she replied, attacking him in the only way she knew how—with proof that he was not as perfect as he believed he was.
As perfect as she once let herself—however briefly—think he was.
0000
As it occasionally happened, Leonard wanted to go at a faster rate of speed than Leslie was willing to undertake. He wanted complete intimacy—the idea seemed to similar to that naïve dream of finding the perfect One. She had to put on the breaks—maintain control of the situation. She felt bad for the guy, but she wasn't looking for a relationship like he wanted. He could not handle the heat and lost interest. It was all the same for Leslie. She was fine with being alone, at least between holidays.
The quartet was over. She would just have to deal. She did this by spending a lot more time in the bookstore.
Six weeks after his awkward goodbye in her lab, Leslie was swallowing a quick lunch when Leonard and his friends approached her. He had avoided her at all costs, even going so far as to opt out of a free ticket to a symposium with the lab team, all because of their history in the bedroom and its sudden ending. She really hadn't meant to hurt him, but what was she supposed to do? If she let Leonard call the shots, then word would have spread around and her reputation would have been lost.
He was nervous and awkward as he came to her table in the lunchroom, and she suffered an irrational thought:
Why can't more men be as confident as Sheldon?
That thought—that Sheldon-was not real, just the projections and assumptions of a naïve girl, and like all things to do with that embarrassing mishap, it was quickly blasted by her most powerful laser, but as always, it only left her annoyed. She did not have time for this—she wanted to get back to the solitary of her lab. She assured Leonard that all details were protected by the inherent confidentiality of the bedroom (duh) and he finally got on to his point.
It sounded like fun, but she wanted to focus on her like sign dilepton super symmetry search—that was, until she learned who was on the opposing team.
"Sheldon Cooper?"
Oh, she was in. She would do anything to beat that arrogant misogynistic East Texas doorknob, if it was the last thing she did.
0000
"Leslie Winkle," Sheldon said, anger hard in his voice.
She was smiling up at him with her usual smile, the smile that promised venom would be laced in her next words.
"Yes," she said wickedly, "the answer to the question 'Who made Sheldon Cooper cry like a little girl?'"
Sheldon's eye twitched; and he remembered that she still owed him an undershirt.
"Well, I am polymerized tree sap and you are an inorganic adhesive so whatever verbal projectile you launch in my direction is reflected off of me, returns on its original trajectory, and adheres to you," he said, every muscle in his body tense and shaking with anger.
His words were clear and enunciated, under tight control, just like everything about him, down to the exact and measured placements of the Velcro straps on his wrist guard.
Leslie did not like using her best insults on such wide targets. "Oh, ouch…"
His eye twitched again. Leslie was pleased to see that even that—a smoke bomb compared to the artillery she had in reserve for him—could crack his control.
Gablehouser called the crowd to order and started the game. It was a close competition, and though she would not admit it aloud, she was impressed that the dumbass could keep up with a full team all alone.
She had let her dislike of him color her opinion of his genius. Reluctantly, she allowed that he was the smartest individual in the room—only as far a physics went, of course—but then it happened. She witnessed, first-hand account, Dr. Sheldon Dumbass Cooper did not have the answer. He was not a perfect as he thought he was.
Victory was sweet.