Eric Gablehauser is not a stupid man. He may not be the purely intellectual equal of some of his charges, but he understands academic politics. The Chancellor's medal had been a vote of confidence – Cooper might have been prepared to fall on his sword out of mortification, but it hadn't been that simple. Bluntly, he is not expendable. Whatever the social oddities, he is brilliant, he attracts funding and accolades. The invitation to Oxford had provoked a hurried, though very quiet and unofficial, departmental meeting – there's a very real concern that they might lose him. Unfortunately, it falls to Gablehauser to deal with the situation...
To those who know the young man in question, the idea that someone might have snapped after being cooped up with him is hardly an impossible one. Three years ago, new to the post, Gablehauser himself had mistaken that naïve arrogance for true impertinence. Knows him rather better by now, but that still doesn't always help when faced with him. Of course, punching him in the mouth would have been one thing, the actual nature of the retaliation raises uncomfortable questions. An odd situation – everybody knows the story, now, but nobody can prove malfeasance.
"Would you ever work on a joint project with Dr Hofstadter again?"
"No." The answer comes swift and sure. Cooper takes a breath, and though his eyes are sad, his jaw is set. "I am sorry, but I would not have full confidence in the results." Straightens his shoulders. "The original fault was mine, in believing that others prized scientific integrity above personal differences. I am not prepared to hazard my career again."
That's one way to put it, and quite characteristic of the man.
"Not everybody is quite as...dedicated as you."
"Not everybody is in the running for a Nobel." Oddly enough, the arrogant snap is reassuring. Far preferable to broken bewilderment, or a tantrum.
It's a shame that it took this sort of situation to bring about the result, but he's not quite the same young man he was, even a year ago. He might dress like a teenager, but there's a very adult anger banked behind those eyes. The fact that he is controlling it as well as he is, is a heartening thing.
Gablehauser himself isn't sure if he would have withstood the temptation to beat on someone who had screwed him over, particularly not a friend; he's quite impressed by Cooper's restraint. But then, he supposes that Cooper is the one with the stellar career and the lovely girlfriend, he can afford to be magnanimous.
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Leonard still has his job, which is something of a relief, but he's also been advised very gently not to bother about the application for tenure-track this year. An oblique but clear rap across the knuckles. It's going to be a case of keeping his head down, and working hard to regain others' confidence in him.
His father had been quietly supportive, anecdotes from long experience of field work and the strange pressures of academia. And Leonard had seen his own habit of non-confrontation, suddenly and startlingly laid out. Unsettling, to realise the particular dynamic that he had recreated, behaviours that he had enabled. 20-20 hindsight. But negotiating the world in terms of contracts, papers and achievement – it's the world he knows, too. He'd always thought his childhood rather peculiar, once he was able to compare it to most other people's. Then he'd met Sheldon.
Despite Sheldon's disparaging comments, Leonard is possessed of a high IQ himself. But he wasn't a prodigy. However advanced his schooling, he had still been within a year or so of his peers. He also comes from a solid white collar professional background, had never needed a job to pay his way through college. Neither had Sheldon, but then he'd graduated from college while Leonard was finishing up High School.
That odd, robotic figure, all jerky movements and blank face, living with lawn furniture and a roomful of comic books. Trying to make sense of a world that he has no frame of reference for. Leonard realises how much they take for granted– they explain some cultural slips to Raj, but they have never bothered with Sheldon. Never stopped to think that perhaps he truly doesn't know, either. Research is no substitute for experience.
When he'd left, Grace had enveloped him in a warm hug, and told him that he was always welcome.
And for just a small moment, everything had been all right.
His parents are adjusting to entirely new lives after thirty seven years. Grace had lost her husband to a heart attack. He's simply been dumped by one girl. It's not the end of the world. He simply needs space and time to come to terms with it all. When he gets back to Pasadena, perhaps it's time he started looking for a new apartment. He doesn't want to be the ex-boyfriend, the ex-best friend, watching from the sidelines. He wants to be himself again, and maybe try and be the friend he should have been. He still can't quite dismiss the years of feeling that the geeky things he likes are somehow 'worthless' - ('Frivolous' was another word. And how many toys had been taken away before he formed 'an unhealthy attachment' to them?) - But he does miss things - laser chess, and cult movie showings, and even arguing over Klingon Boggle and how to divide up the egg rolls. And in that shabby, warm little house that is somehow more of a home than he's known before, wrestling one of his shoes away from Smudge the puppy, Leonard had realised how much he misses having a pet. The simple, uncomplicated affection of an animal. He could have that.
Somewhere out there, there has to be a girl who would like a short, quiet guy who plays the 'cello and can't eat cheese. He just has to go out and find her.
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Raj surveys the article with a certain amount of pride – 'Dr S Cooper and Dr R Koothrappali.' He had pushed for a co-authorship, and Sheldon had eventually agreed. Sure, the guy can sometimes (mostly) be unreasonable, but he isn't impervious to logical argument. The dark spectre of a return home has been banished for at least another year, and Professor Laughlin has even approached him about mentoring a couple of undergraduates for the SURF scheme. Since they are both male, Raj has been able to agree. (He has apologised to Dr Millstone by e-mail, even if he still runs away in embarrassment when he sees her in the break room.)
He sniggers at the quick text that has just popped up on his phone. A Lolpup from Raquel. Whatever the thing is with Raquel, it seems to have settled to a friendship, one without what other people might think of as benefits, but he finds that he doesn't care so much – Raquel is smart and funny, but she likes Szechuan food, and she doesn't get why Star Wars is considered so great. He's taken to hanging out with Stuart more lately, though, and he'd had a surprise invite out to the movies with Si and Dan. (Si's girlfriend had made them dinner beforehand, and then thrown them all out to watch their 'dumb guy movie'. It was kinda fun, and he'd managed three whole words to her.)
He's not sure why he can't really talk to women - (attractive women, and he's not sure if he should feel ashamed of the fact that his mind seems to have an inner Howard) – he'd grown up in a house with his mother and grandmother, and sisters and female cousins around him all the time. For all his father's over-bearing manner, there is absolutely no doubt as to who the power in the Koothrappali household belongs to. And somewhere, in the back of his mind, where he really doesn't look at it, is the knowledge that if he does go back to India, he's going to find himself engaged to a carbon copy, as soon as his mother finds a suitable candidate.
He looks across the table at Howard, who is having one of his weird, strained phone rows with his own mother.
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Howard winds up the call, and continues to eye his cell hopefully. Bernadette had said that she might call, but she hasn't, and he doesn't know whether to play it cool, or perhaps leave her another message. He still can't quite shake the nervous narrowing of his eyes whenever Leonard talks to her, tries not to be too obviously needy. But a man likes to know where he stands, that his woman has him on her mind.
Bernadette - he wants this to be something, he thinks, but he still can't quite make that last leap, not yet.
He threatens to move out, sometimes, but he never will. Oh, sure, his mother talks about how she'd like one of those fancy retirement condos, or thinks he should move out, but she also slips sometimes, calls him 'Mandel', or treats him like a child.
A week goes by without a shrieking row, they'd both worry.
Been 'the man of the house' since he was eleven, and somehow also never grown past being the little boy left behind, the tears and the blame and the extracted promises, because they only have each other, the sticky family tangle, love and hate and frustration.
That chilly iceberg Leonard calls a mother scares him. Even in the worst times, when he could cheerfully strangle his own mother, he never feels that she's disappointed in him. More likely to boast to her friends about her son, such a nice, clever boy, and doing so well at the University, too.
Raj is the one who probably had it easiest – wealthy upbringing, his parents still alive and together. But they are halfway round the world; Raj had confided once that he daren't go back, his mother would take away his passport and marry him off. He'd been serious, too.
There are some things you can't outrun, though. Conscious defiance every time he eats bacon, and he doesn't think he'll ever stop that cell-deep flinch. He knows what it's like to fight yourself, and yet have half your identity rooted, tethered. (They snigger at Sheldon being fussy with his food, but the guy is an amateur, frankly.) One day, he'll lose Raj, back to the comfortable groove designed for him.
Except for a few brief years of college, he's lived in the same house, the same bedroom – understands Sheldon's drive for routine and habit, when you wear a comfortable groove into your life. This pace of change scares him, times when he's called Raj, and Raj has been out with his new friends, and that little cold pit opens up again.
Because changing means growing up, and growing up means growing older, and one day, he's going to be alone because his mother will be gone, and Raj will be gone, and he could just be the short guy with the nervous smile and the tired jokes, still hanging round the faculty parties.
Eyes flick to his cell again, as it rings. And Raj gives him a tolerant grin, rolls his eyes.
"Dude, you are one whipped puppy."
Howard knows it, but there is gratitude in him, for his friend, who has put up with a lot of crap, and is still sitting across the table.
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"Oh, hey, Doctor Dumbass."
"Professor Dumbass, if you must." Sheldon smiles at the stunned Leslie."I've been awarded tenure. Associate professor at present, and it is a bit of a nuisance, because it means that I have to take on some supervision of doctoral candidates, but really, it's long overdue..."
Leaves her spluttering her outrage, and continues cheerfully on his way.
It might well be a gambit to keep him at this particular institution, but by implication, that does mean that other institutions were interested. An increased salary could only be a positive thing, too – if necessary, he can afford the rent on the apartment by himself. He assumes that was what Gablehauser was implying when he alluded to possible changes in his future living arrangements, anyway.
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Professor Seibert knocks on the doorframe, raises his eyebrows.
"How did it go?"
"Surprisingly well. He didn't call me a neanderthal this time." Gablehauser's grin is wry.
"I thought he'd probably head down to the cafeteria to broadcast the news, but I didn't see him. He's not doing one of his on-line interviews, is he?"
"No. Believe it or not, he's going to the florists before they close."
"I still can't decide whether the fact that he actually has a girlfriend scares me or not."
Gablehauser smiles.
"Well, she seemed like a nice, sane girl. I'm sure they have a very normal life together..."
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From the security of their fortress, the Army cast their defiance at the besieging Horde. Impossible to get a large enough force up to attack the gates, when the defenders on the wall can drop missiles. Penny dodges back from her sortie to drop back down behind the front line, snarls.
"Too many of them on the walls. We're gonna need some better spears to knock 'em off with..."
"I think we can manage that." Sven grins, wide and wicked, and puts his hands to his mouth. "Time to unleash hell, guys!"
Various Horde members spring to life. Tarps are thrown back, odd-shaped pieces of wood hauled out of concealment. Penny realises what she's looking at as the frame rises. She rounds on Sheldon, hands on hips, every inch the angry warrior queen.
"Sheldon..."
"I didn't participate in the build. I merely consulted." How a grown man can look so much like a naughty child, she isn't sure. Big blue eyes, and his face all guilty defiance. "It's a scale version of the 'Warwolf', the largest trebuchet ever constructed. Edward I of England used it in his campaigns against the Scots..."
"We've been debating on a name. Since we had to keep it secret, we did think 'Fight Cub'..."
"Oh, god." Penny puts her face in her hands. "That's horrible."
"...but Sheldon wants to call it 'Slugger'."
Her crazy boyfriend wants to name his nasty, scary war machine after her? She tries to glare at him, but it is very difficult to stay angry. It's kinda impressive, actually, watching the thing slot together. Sheldon shuffles and twitches, obviously yearning to participate, and then snaps.
"Penny, they are putting the counter-weight on all wrong..."
She relents, gives him a little kiss and a shove.
"Go on, then, Dr Fix-it..."
Up on the walls, there is consternation and pointing. Some frantic consultation of the rules of combat. Definite panic when there is obviously nothing to preclude 'use of a mad scientist'.
"I think you should do the honours." Sven puts his hands on the lever. "On your mark."
Sheldon raises his arm. Penny squeezes his other hand, and grins up at him. He grins back.
"Fire...everything!"
A sweep of a black-clad arm, a plangent note, and the first (foam) rock launches out of the cradle. The flight is breathless and beautiful, smacks sharply into the wood and canvas wall, causes an abrupt scattering. The Horde howl their delight, a full-throated roar.
Sheldon actually jumps in the air, arms spread and yelling. Penny whoops her own victory cry.
Someone (it was probably Howard) had once said of Sheldon that the only spontaneous thing he was ever likely to do in his life was to combust at the very thought. Only... he looks at Penny, laughing up at him free and fierce and happy, and he has one cheerful, glorious moment of pure instinct.
Penny squeaks, and then responds enthusiastically.
He kisses with his eyes half-shut, and intensity in his gaze, watching her eyelashes against her cheek, the flush of her skin, the kindling darkness in her own eyes as they blink open, dazed.
"Penny...I have my work, I thought I didn't want anything else...but you were always there, with your mess and your prattle and your dreadful singing, and you got into the middle of everything...and, oh, Penny, I really do think that...I might love you."
"Sheldon..." It's not a romantic speech, really. She shouldn't be smiling at him so hard her face hurts. "I think I might love you, too."
"Good." he says, soft exhale of relief. "An equal reciprocity of affection makes the situation manageable."
She guesses that's Sheldon-speak for 'kiss me again', so she does.
"Jeez, you two, at least wait until after we've won, huh?" Raquel grins.
Penny smirks up at Sheldon.
"So let's finish this thing, then."
"As you wish, my Queen."
She looks towards the fortress.
"We really need a battering-ram..."
"Oh, I've already drawn up the plans for that." Sheldon assures her cheerfully.
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Who'd have ever thought? Sheldon Cooper. In her bed, and very definitely without his pyjamas. She should probably get up, find herself a t-shirt to wear or something, but she feels pleasantly boneless, lying here against him.
She didn't plan it. But after the laundry was put away, and they were cuddling on the couch, somehow the kisses got warmer and deeper, and she'd murmured 'stay with me?' and he'd murmured 'are you seducing me, Penny?', and she'd said 'uh-huh' and then he'd smiled.
This is how it should be. It's so perfectly him – a little awkward, a little clumsy, but with such a sweetness. He's fun, she discovers, and there's laughter and startled pleasure for both of them. And in some ways, he's a very normal guy, after all, because he goes to sleep afterwards. Trails her lips over the faint salt of his skin, and lets the happy aftershocks thrill through her as she drifts...
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Sheldon blinks up, briefly confused by the direction of the morning sunlight. Not his room, not his bed, but not unfamiliar territory, and the weight on one arm and the side of his chest is not an incipient heart-attack, but Penny. She's snorting in her sleep, just a little, and he feels himself smiling, tucks her more comfortably under his chin. She makes a soft grumble, burrows closer. He thinks that perhaps forgoing his pyjamas this once isn't so bad, for the feel of her skin against his.
He can't be concerned about her invasion of his personal space any more, after the undignified, but incredibly satisfying, activities of last night. He understands the mechanics, biology, physiology. But nothing had prepared him for what it actually felt like, to be with Penny.
It hadn't exactly been a shock to discover that he likes sex. Well, he likes sex with Penny – he has no intention of finding out if he'd like it with anyone else. It isn't even that he's never wanted to before – his hormones are depressingly normal – but he has always had the idea that it should be more than a mutual masturbatory experience to satisfy his ego. Not quite the tenets of his mother's faith, or his grandmother's old-fashioned southern courtesy, or even the common-sense advice of his father - "Just because you can, don't always mean you should, boy." - something in between them all, distilled notions of respect and principle. There should be...love...involved. He'd had cause to question that idea, watching the world around him, had come to the sad conclusion that it was yet another difference in him. He had never had that emotional connection, never thought he would. Easier to deny the half of his life, than to face that loneliness.
(If they had taken his intellect from him, he had thought that there would be nothing. Everything he was, bound up in that one aspect, and without it, he was just something wrong and ridiculous, cast adrift in the world.)
But Penny had taken his hands, and he'd followed without hesitation, because they both wanted this. No abstract curiosity, but a very definite desire, for gentle hands on warm skin, and soft kisses.
She isn't filling a girl-shaped hole in his life. He's made a Penny-shaped hole, just for her. She's his 'deal'.
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Penny wakes up alone in her bed. But there is still a neatly folded pile of clothing on the chair, the very faint sound of the television, and when she peers round her door, Sheldon, looking less ridiculous in one of her robes than she might have expected, is sitting on her couch with a bowl of cereal.
Laughs to herself. Last night, that man was making her toes curl, and now he's sitting, eyes glued to a cartoon. Loops her arm round his neck, and drops a kiss onto the side of his head. Sheldon makes a small happy grumble through his cereal, and says,
"The coffee pot is on. I wasn't sure whether the 11 o'clock rule still applied."
Penny saunters past him to get her coffee, counting under her breath...
"Penny, that's my t-shirt." Outrage and intrigue, and she just grins at him.
They're going to fight, and drive each other crazy, and he's going to be weird and obsessive, and she's going to be ditzy and disorganized, and maybe she'll never have the big screen career, and maybe he'll never quite work out how to act like a proper person, but they will laugh and cook and battle monsters and kick ass at 'Halo' and he'll teach her the difference between Klingons and hadrons, and she'll teach him how to drive and who Radiohead are, and somewhere in the middle of it all, they'll just be stupid in love with each other, and it's going to be...
This.