Took a while to get this out. Dealing with resolution and frinal chapters, I hope.

Clint: still no femmslash. Sorry, dude.

Reparata

Chapter 19

Delhi Airport
New Delhi, India

She didn't see him at the 'Arrivals' gate and she was disappointed. Even though she'd left her company car in the long-term parking area, she still wanted him to greet her, smiling his dorky smile that she had come to love so much, sweep her up into his arms and kiss her until she almost passed out.

Instead, Priya collected her luggage and walked out to the curb and hailed a taxi to take her to the secure parking lot. It was raining heavily, a veritable monsoon, and she laughed because after all, it was monsoon season. She was unlocking her car when she heard her name called and turned and there he was, soaked to the skin and slightly out of breath.

"Raj dropped me off at the wrong terminal and by the time I found the right gate you'd already gone through Customs and I almost caught you but you slipped into the cab and – "

She ran the three steps necessary to hug him and it was she who had initiated the kiss that left her reeling in delight.

"Priya, you're getting all wet," but he didn't let go of her. If anything, he drew her closer.

"Not yet, Shel, but I will be. Have you ever made love in a car? No? Oh, another first for us because neither have I! I thought about you the entire time I was gone and I had this crazy daydream that you would be waiting for me at the airport and we would have sex in the cab on the way home…but this is much better!"

They got back to their 'apartment' – the pool house apartment – three hours after her flight arrived. It took two showers before they were 'clean' and then, exhausted from the flight and the three bouts of 'reunion' sex, they tumbled into bed and slept.

Her last thought as he wrapped her in his arms and sighed 'goodnight' into her hair was that in the morning she was going to rock his world and for once, render him utterly speechless.

Or so she hoped.

He woke first as was his habit. She, the object of his intense desire so many times in the past days, was sprawled out on her stomach, naked as the day she was born, facing him. He reached over and moved hair from her face and gently kissed the corner of her mouth. Her lips twisted and then she rubbed her face in the zillion-count Egyptian cotton sheets and sighed and fell back to sleep.

Sheldon hit the pool on the run. He swam naked so the dash was as much for modesty as exercise. He found that he really liked swimming first thing in the morning. It woke his body up and got the blood flowing. He also liked just sinking down to the bottom and lying there, enjoying the quiet, looking up at the pool surface broken by rain, listening to his heart beat. Thinking.

Priya loved him. Intensely. He loved her. Intensely. So why was there this gnawing feeling that something – someone – was missing from his life? He knew the answer, of course. He'd always known it but even after her confession of always loving him she'd gone back with Leonard; she'd become engaged again! That meant that Penny loved Leonard enough to marry him.

To Sheldon, marriage was a contract, an agreement between two parties to join together within the confines of a social contract. It was unbreakable.

It didn't make sense and Sheldon Cooper was not a big fan of things that didn't make sense. He forced his mind to ignore the burning in his lungs and the graying-out of his peripheral vision.

His body felt so light, totally weightless, and his mind functioned with such clarity. Penny. The emptiness was the absence of her presence. He felt relieved that he'd made sense out of the nonsensical.

It was good fortune that she'd decided to ambush her naked husband and have her way with him as a prelude to 'the great discussion'. That was her only thought as she swam underwater up to him, pulling her way up his supine body and scaring the crap out of him.

He rocketed to the surface, startled out of his metal reverie, sputtering and then glaring as Priya bobbed to the surface. He could stand with his head above water but she had to tread water.

She laughed and then wrapped her arms and legs around him and he wrapped his arms around her instinctively, protecting her.

"I was working on a problem and had the solution and…"

"I thought you'd 'worked' long enough, Shel-jaan. Do you love me? I mean, do you really love me?"

"I married you, Priya. How could you doubt me now?"

"I think you married me because you wanted to ride the elephant at the wedding. You should have seen the look on your face when Daddy said he'd gone 'all out' and even hired an elephant rather than a limo for our procession."

"Well, if you must know, it was one of the major reasons." He saw the sudden sadness in her eyes and realized he'd stepped on his pecker.

"Priya, you know I'm teasing, right? I love you and I want to spend the rest of my days with you – but only if we have a pool in our home. I like waking up at dawn and diving into the water. It's a won – "

Her kiss stopped him. She was both reassured and happy that her banter had opened him up to possibilities. "Our home, Shel? What about your apartment and – "

"OUR apartment. But I think a home of our own would be nice, someday. Don't you? You have to entertain and I don't want you schlepping through bars with all those men ogling what is mine, understand?" He drove his point home by slipping in between her wet folds and she groaned in his ear and then bit his lobe.

"Ohh, yes…right there…"

Pasadena

Penny was on the verge of a panic attack. 'What happens if he says 'No'? What happens if he says 'Yes'? What if he doesn't want the 'deal'? I need him in my life and I don't care if she's part of it. A 'polyamorous' lifestyle? His mother will shit a brick!'

'Will Sheldon treat me like his dirty secret? How will his colleagues accept a triad-relationship? Sheldon is so proud of his position in that scientific community of his. What will this do to his reputation?'

She had already had this argument with Priya but it was hard to doubt her sincerity when she was nibbling at Penny's throat and Penny's fingertips were teasing her nipples. She wasn't really into 'girl on girl' but she had had experiences and they'd been enjoyable but not something she'd give up a stiff prick for on a regular basis.

'Sheldon's such a shy guy. How will he handle us all being naked and in the same bed sometimes? How will he deal with his friends? How will I deal with mine? How will he react if Priya and I…Oh, God, if this gets out into the public…what might it do to my career?"

She was deathly afraid that the entire arrangement would appear 'unsavory' to straight-laced Sheldon Cooper, PhD, who thought 'coitus' was a foul joke played on Mankind by a higher power.

Delhi, India

While Penny drank wine alone on Sheldon's couch, sitting cheekily in his spot, late at night, Priya and Sheldon were freshly showered and dressed and sitting at a small table talking about her 'idea' over a very late breakfast.

Priya opened up her mental brief and fired the first salvo.

"Listen, you and I, we are a couple, a unit, an entity whose origins defy convention and I want to further defy convention with a suggestion but first, my dearest husband, you must let me speak from my heart and promise not to interrupt."

He nodded his assent and wondered how such a beautiful morning could suddenly devolve into such a tangle of doubt and fear.

"Sheldon, you love me. I love you. You love me but you have already explained that you also love another just as much and – "

He started to interrupt her but she stopped him with her harsh tone.

"No, Sheldon, you promised to hear me out so sit back and listen!"

He sat back and nodded and then made a 'continue' gesture with his hands.

Priya reached across the table and took his hand hoping that the truth of her emotions would come across to him.

"You are incomplete, my love, and I have done something that may offend you, may even drive us apart, but I did it for you because I love you, and for us because I want you to be happy and I'm happy when you are."

She took a deep breath and then looked him square in the eye as if he was an intransigent juror and she drove on.

"I spent every free moment with Penny while in the U.S. I see why you love her, Sheldon, and I know that she feels the same about you as I do, so…we talked and talked and came to an agreement, an arrangement that will provide all of us with who and what we need. I need you and you need me. You need her and she needs you. And…we all need each other so…"

"Priya, is there a Reader's Digest version? You're going on and on and not making a point yet. Just what is it you are proposing? I thought they taught you brevity in law school?"

She ignored his snarky comment and pressed on.

"Penny and I…we want us to live together, to share everything, to trust one another and…and love one another. Sheldon Cooper, Penny and I want you to love us both as in a triad, a polyamorous…"

He stood up, red in the face, angrier than she'd ever seen him and his lips moved but he couldn't form words. Sheldon's mind was racing with the underlying implications of her statement. He couldn't form a coherent thought that made any sense at all to him. Finally, his mind slowed down enough to speak.

"I married you, Priya, not Penny. 'Forsaking all others' wasn't spoken in the ceremony but it sure as hell was implied! I can dealt with my feelings for Penny and…and I can't begin to understand how you…how she…how I…"

He felt himself panic. A triad? What the fuck? When did strait-laced Priya the snooty lawyer become a damned unreconstructed hippie!?

"I'm going for a walk. I need to think. I need to…I need to think, yeah, think."

Sheldon's mind turned her words over and over and…

"Just how much time did you and Penny spend together? What about Leonard, her on-again-off-again fiancée? Where was he during all these discussions? I'll just bet he would love the idea. Maybe you and Lenny and Penny should be in your goddamned triad. Did you try it out for size?"

He hurriedly grabbed a rain slicker, his phone and passport and headed out of the pool house, destination unknown.

One more and thank God I'm done with this. Damn you, Jislane!