THE METAHUMAN TRANSFIGURATION
Description: The gang gets superpowers. It's not as cool as some of them always thought. Alternate Season 9 premiere.
Notes: This particular update delay I blame firmly on authors allanjay and Arya's prayers, the former for distracting me with "The Command Performance", and the latter for writing a close-to-500K CHUCK fanfic that sucked me in like a black hole (astute readers may just possibly have noticed that I like long stories). Hopefully this is reassurance to everyone that I do plan to keep pounding away. For those interested in my head-casting, as before, Breanna Locke is played (in my brain) by Viola Davis, Senator Richard Thorpe by Kelsey Grammer of Frasier and Boss, and Jerome Belasco by Kevin Chapman from Person of Interest. My research has not found whatever Amy's actual address is beyond stating that her apartment is in Glendale and that it's number #314, so I have made up the rest and do not expect it to match canon if ever established.
Warning: For the purposes of this story, I have deliberately made a critical assumption about a key part of Sheldon's personality and backstory that both diverges from canon and might, in theory, be taken as an Unfortunate Implication (to use the TVTropes term). In order to get my disclaimers up front without spoiling the story, I have added an Author's Note to the end, but for now please note that my development of Sheldon in this story is solely for the purposes of this story—it is not proposed as something consistent with the canon character, or as plausible or relevant to any character and story but this single tale.
Disclaimer: The author does not own THE BIG BANG THEORY or any of the characters.
- 18 -
HUNTINGTON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, PASADENA, CA
FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 2015, 11:40 P.M.
The horribleness of waking up soaked in a pool of her own blood aside, Bernadette didn't normally think of herself as a squeamish person, at least when it came to medical work: she liked needles no more than anybody else but was perfectly capable of both enduring and watching them calmly, she wasn't nauseated at all by the sight of blood (a fact she had occasionally used to amused advantage over the considerably-less-robust Howard), and thought nothing of handling deadly pathogens once she'd put basic safety precautions in place (though she had gotten more careful about that since the raccoon virus incident). But watching the nurses sliding the needles into the comatose Sammy—one for an I.V., one for a steady-drip sedative designed to keep him unconscious—and attaching the electrodes and sensors intended to monitor him, she couldn't fend off a chill.
It wasn't that the nurses were clumsy or sadistic, far from it; if anything, it was the opposite—the sheer, businesslike indifference, the nonchalant competence, with which they went about trapping a man inside his own body—that creeped her out. She thought of what must have happened when they were first rescued from the collapsed Boer Laboratory building: carried and stripped by strangers, sized up by dispassionate eyes whose only concern was answers, turned into as helpless a specimen as anything in one of her own petri dishes. On one level, Bernadette knew, that wasn't quite fair: what should one ask for in a medical professional, after all, if not detached professionalism? But it was different when you knew that the procedures were not being carried out for the benefit of the patient . . . when you knew that this was an act of imprisonment, not healing.
People who'd dedicated their lives to helping others, she couldn't help thinking, shouldn't have accepted this sort of thing so blithely.
Oh yeah? said a darker part of her, the ruthless part she'd never liked much but which had always come inevitably to the forefront whenever anything triggered her fighting reflexes. You were the one who kept this guy in a coma until you got here—hell, you're still doing it now, honeypants. She'd never liked that endearment either, but she'd developed a sort of grudging affection for the way Howard liked to tease her with it. Not to mention the person who nearly murdered a guy with an induced heart attack. Where do you get off judging what other people should or shouldn't do, when it's everybody's safety on the line?
She shook her head. No, she refused to feel guilty about Rozokov's thug. Sean would have used and butchered her for his own pleasure if she hadn't forestalled him by cutting her own throat first—an act she still couldn't quite believe she'd done, in hindsight; it made her skin feel cold even now to think about it. And even if it had taken Sheldon, of all people, to bring her back to herself, in the end she had taken the higher road: she'd let Sean live. When the Vegas cops got around to getting Rozokov, Sean and Pyotr out of the time-pocket under the Camelot, she was going to make damn sure Sean went to jail, she decided grimly, even if she had to reproduce the fricking neck wound live for the jury herself.
"Dr. Rostenkowski?" She snapped out of her haze, blinking at the nurse who'd addressed her, a tall kind-faced young man. He indicated the monitors, now all in operation, with the primary cardiac screen showing a steady, slow beep, beep, beep. Sammy's face was placid in unconsciousness; his chest rose and fell in deep, even breaths. "We've got him stabilized. Whatever you were, uh, doing, I think you can ease back now."
Bernadette nodded. She'd been holding Sammy's brain in an unconscious delta-wave state since they'd pulled him out of the SWAT van, though in truth it had barely felt necessary; after that final healing the man had been so exhausted he'd passed out all on his own. If she read the feel of his metabolism right, he'd have easily slept another seven to eight hours without help. But nobody had felt like taking any chances, and she couldn't really blame them. She closed her eyes and released the hold.
It might have felt effortless, but it must have taken more exertion than she'd realized. To her own surprise she suddenly found herself swaying on her feet, as if all the fatigue she would normally have accumulated over the evening had suddenly crashed down on her all at once. The kind-faced nurse evidently spotted her wavery balance, for he put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. "You okay, Doc? You need to sit down?"
Doc? She wanted to laugh. Not even Howard called her that. "No, no. Thank you. I'll be all right." She considered calling up her power to quash the fatigue once more, but thought better of it. She'd already pushed herself beyond the limits of what she'd thought possible, and wasn't keen on finding out where they really lay right now. Maybe Raj had been right, she thought muzzily. She should be more careful. She blinked herself back to focus by force of will alone. "What's going to happen to him?"
"This guy? Sammy?" The nurse sighed. "That's . . . above my pay grade. But the FBI's already put men outside this door, and they'll be stationing men inside as well, so . . . I don't know," he finished at last.
Bernadette nodded. She'd expected as much. "Okay, then. Um—can you tell me how to get to Room 814? Dr. Foxworth said he'd wait there with my husband, and the rest of my friends." Truth told, it was Sheldon she particularly wanted to see, though she would never have ever believed that could be true; right now, she just wanted to be back in her own house with her husband, and Sheldon was the fastest means to that end. Grateful as she was for the police jacket she wore, it was making her skin crawl. She wanted a bath and her own bed.
The nurse frowned. "814? You sure?" He held up his hands at her exasperated look. "I only ask 'cause that's one of the rooms the FBI's sorta commandeered, while they're here . . . they've been pretty anal about nobody going in those areas who isn't supposed to."
"Really." Tired as she was, Bernadette's brain still worked fast. She reached for her pocket, then remembered with a grimace that she'd still never gotten her phone back. She gave the nurse her best helpless puppy-dog eyes. "You wouldn't happen to have a phone on you, would you?" she said as sweetly as she could. "Or be willing to let me borrow it? I just need to make a local call . . . ."
Fortunately, the nurse had, and was. Bernadette had to look up several numbers online before she found the one she thought she wanted; she'd been given the number yesterday but had stuffed the card in her purse and forgotten about it. If she was right, the person she wanted to reach would have set up call forwarding anyway, and even if she got no answer—it was, after all, nearly midnight—even a message would kick certain wheels into motion . . . .
The ringing cut off; there came a series of clicks and tocks; then the line rang again, and within two rings a voice she recognized answered. Bernadette sighed in relief. "Hi," she said. "It's Dr. Rostenkowski-Wolowitz. We're back in town. And I think we could use some help."
ROOM 814, EIGHTH FLOOR, HUNTINGTON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL
11:54 P.M.
The last time Lucy had seen this part of Huntington Memorial, two days ago, she'd been an insubstantial, invisible spectre, looking at it through the eerie negative vision of her phased-out state. And it had also been the place where she'd found Emily in an ICU chamber, and been the first to see her wake as . . . something very different from what she'd been. She hadn't seen what Emily had done, but she'd heard the beginnings of it, while fleeing: screams; gunfire; useless orders shouted in panic. Walking through the corridors now in full, tangible view with Glenn, Howard, Raj, and a couple of clearly exhausted FBI agents, she was startled at how mundane it suddenly seemed—just another quiet night in the hospital, with the peculiar hushed stillness all such places took on after visiting hours.
But Lucy had always paid more attention to her surroundings than people realized, and she couldn't miss the fact that though the hospital staff had clearly done their best, not everything had been quite restored to its normal pristine state. There were still brownish stains at the base of the walls, here and there. A pile of broken equipment—gurneys, IV stands, transport carts—had been shoved into the corner of a small end corridor, out of the main passageways. At least one room they passed had a door missing, broken hinges showing where it had been torn off. The tension between the green-scrubbed government personnel and the blue-scrubbed Huntington doctors was still very clearly in effect, even though all of them looked equally frazzled and worn. Far more of the ICU units seemed occupied than anyone would wish. And in multiple places, small black holes, or the rough white dots of fresh spackle, dotted the walls.
Room 814 turned out to be a boardroom, positioned at one end of the building; three of its walls were almost entirely transparent glass, through which Pasadena's nightscape of streetlights and buildings could be seen. Like the room Lucy had seen downstairs, it was half-filled with tables on which laptops, phones and bankers' boxes of files had been set up, and locked gunmetal-green filing cabinets had been wheeled into the corners. The FBI agents sitting with them now had taken seats at one of those tables, and didn't seem to care what they did as long as none of them went near the bank of laptops. For her part, Lucy had been perfectly happy to grab one of the executive chairs around the main table, wheel it over to one of the window-walls and sit right against the glass, leaning her shoulder and the side of her head against its cool hardness. A minute later, after dumping his body-armour vest on the table, Raj had put a chair of his own beside hers and joined her. He had chosen to sit facing outwards so he could watch the city, but within a minute his hand had crept out to take hers. She held onto it firmly.
God, she was tired. But somehow she had no temptation to close her eyes and sleep. Some deep part of her, the part that remembered every sucker-punch of disappointment she'd ever had, refused to let go of her wariness. If something went wrong, she had a terrible feeling it would happen now, right when everybody thought it was over, and safe, and done. Because that was always when things did go wrong.
Glenn was tapping briskly away on his phone. Howard had dumped his vest and all his gadgetry onto the boardroom table in a clatter of metal and plastic, and paced now from one side of the room to the other, rubbing his face with both hands. The swollen bruise from Joe's punch had subsided a little, but was still lividly clear and visible; his auto-massage lightened to his fingertips alone when his hands passed over it. At last he, too, ran out of energy and let himself drop into one of the chairs. His eyebrows went up and he looked down at it. "Holy Moses," he said, wonderingly. "This might be the most comfortable chair I've ever sat in. Hey, Raj, why don't CalTech's boardrooms have chairs like these?"
"Oh. Um, a few of them do, actually," said Raj. "President Siebert met with me in one, back when People Magazine was making a big deal about me discovering that little planetoid out beyond the Kuiper Belt. You just probably never did anything important enough to get invited to one . . . ." At Howard's expression, Raj's voice trailed off and his face fell. Then he winced and he put his hand to his head as if a sudden headache had pierced it. "If it helps, dude, I now know exactly how annoyed you are."
"Sorry." Howard closed his eyes and sighed. "I'm just tired." He sat quietly for a few moments, then suddenly burst out, "I went to space, you know! That wasn't important? I mean, come on!"
"Well, Mr. Wolowitz, think of it this way," said Glenn, looking up from his phone. "If your antigravity flying devices there can be built on an industrial scale, you'll have blown open the global space industry worldwide. Now everybody will be able to go to space who wants to."
Howard blinked, sat back looking quizzical a moment, then frowned. Raj rolled his eyes. "Oh, for Krishna's sake, dude, what's the problem now? Being the next Elon Musk isn't enough for you?"
"It's not that, it's just . . . ." Howard grimaced and hunched down a little, looking both embarrassed and annoyed. Finally he let out a breath. "Look, Raj, maybe this is just me being a petty schmuck, but . . . becoming an astronaut was literally the coolest thing I ever did in my life. Okay," he amended after a moment, "maybe second coolest, after getting Bernadette to marry me. It's like being a member of the ultimate exclusive club—less than six hundred people out of eight billion, in the history of the entire planet, have ever seen the Earth from space." He lifted his hands and let them fall. "But if people like Barry Kripke can buy an economy ticket to orbit for the same price as a transatlantic flight, it kinda takes a lot of the cool factor out of it."
Glenn snorted and put his phone down. "Well, Mr. Wolowitz, you're correct on one thing: You are being a petty schmuck." Before Howard could react with more than an indignant look, he went on, "But as it happens, I've interviewed Dr. Kripke, and I can appreciate how his presence tends to, shall we say, reduce the ambient refinement level in anything. It may amuse you to know that since he woke up two days ago, he's already gotten a WHAMMO on his medical chart."
"'WHAMMO'?" Lucy found herself asking.
"Ah. That's one of those informal acronyms that makes its way into medical jargon," Glenn explained. "Like GOMER, which means 'Get Out of My Emergency Room', or ATFO, which means 'Asked to', ah, well, 'Fork Off', if you get my meaning." To her own surprise, Lucy giggled. Glenn grinned at her. "As for WHAMMO, well, that stands for 'Wandering Hands Means Men Only'. It's used for male patients who, er, have trouble grasping professional boundaries with the female personnel."
Howard suddenly looked pale and visibly gulped. Raj glanced at him, then flicked his eyes back to Lucy and made a curious face. It took her a second to realize that he was trying hard to stifle laughter, and another second to realize why—evidently Howard hadn't always had a firm grasp on those boundaries himself. Probably trying to firmly grasp other things, Lucy told herself, choking back her own snickers at the thought.
The door opened, and one of the FBI agents standing guard outside waved Sheldon, Amy and Penny in, then closed the door firmly behind them. Raj jumped up and went to hug all three of them, which Penny returned firmly, Amy a little uncomfortably and Sheldon not at all—the taller man simply teleported five feet straight backwards with an offput expression, reappearing with his hands held up defensively. In the corner, the two agents at their worktable literally jumped in their seats at the sight. Raj only frowned. "Dude, what the hell?"
Sheldon shook his head. "I'm sorry, Raj, but the crisis appears to have passed, so I don't think we should be prioritizing emotional expression over hygenic safety any more. If a reassuring hug is that important to you I'm sure it can wait until you've had a chance to shower and change your clothes." He went to the boardroom table and sat down, leaning back and folding his arms.
Howard frowned. "Who peed in his cornflakes?" he asked Amy, with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder at Sheldon.
Penny sighed. "He made some kind of mistake shutting down his . . . whooshy-gateway thing—" she gestured aimlessly "—after everybody drove through it, and you know what he's like when he makes mistakes. To make matters worse, it hurt Amy, somehow." She gave her friend a worried look. In the boardroom's bright light it only emphasized the sore redness around her eyes.
Raj's eyebrows shot up. "Oh my God, Amy, are you okay?"
"I'm fine, I'm fine," said Amy, holding up her hands as if to fend Raj off. "It was a temporary negative feedback, nothing more. I'm sure we'll be able to correct for it next time."
That did get Sheldon to look around. "'Next time'?" he repeated. "Oh, no, Little Miss Copycat, we are not risking that again, not until I'm one hundred percent sure what happened and how to fix it."
Amy blew out a breath though a clenched jaw. "Sheldon," she gritted, "how do you propose to figure out what did happen unless I assist you with further experimentation?"
"Oh, now you sound like Leonard." Sheldon waved a dismissive hand. "As if practical empiricism was the only way to know anything for sure. All I have to do is run the numbers on the space-time manifold, Amy. Once I have everything written down, once I see how the numbers add up, I'll know what to do. Your help is not required."
"Oh, sure," Amy said, tight-lipped. "As long as you don't misread square metres for square centimetres on a conversion table again."
Sheldon's mouth fell open as he stared at her. What he would have said, if anything, Lucy would never know; Raj gave a sudden pained moan and stepped back, his hands to his head. From the chagrined looks on their faces, both Sheldon and Amy clearly realized what had happened. Sheldon huffed and stalked away to a far corner of the room, leaning against the wall with his arms folded as if to shut everything else out. Amy dashed to Raj and grabbed his arm, looking apologetic—then jerked back, wringing her hand as if Raj had shocked her. Lucy bit her lip, got up, went to Raj's side and took his hand. At the contact, she felt him relax.
The door opened again; Howard whirled around with a hopeful look, but his face fell when instead of Bernadette, another group of dark-suited men strode in, all with earpieces and wrist mikes. They quickly checked all corners of the room, exchanging low-voiced mutters with the FBI agents in the corner, then took up positions around the room's exterior like sentries. The leader snapped, "Clear," into his wrist mike, then opened the door.
In contrast to the sharply professional look of the men standing around the room, the two men who entered both looked like they were running short of sleep; though the taller one wore a brown three-piece suit perfectly cut to his broad-shouldered frame, the jacket hung open, the vest was half undone and the dark green tie dangled loosely from his unbuttoned collar. The shorter one, who was fat and had a hangdog jowly face, hadn't made even that nod to formality; he wore corduroy pants, a sports coat and a stained plaid shirt. He threw himself into one of the seats at the main table as the tall man came over to stand in front of Penny, looking her up and down like a sergeant sizing up a soldier he hadn't expected to volunteer. Penny scowled and glared back, but the clenched hand at the collar of her T-shirt betrayed her nervousness. Glenn sat up, staring at the tall man with a look of recognition and what, Lucy thought in sudden worry, seemed alarmingly close to dismay.
"I understand they're calling you the Angel," said the tall man. Close up, he was handsome in a square-jawed, high-forehead way; his voice was rich and theatrically deep. "And that we have you to thank for helping to shut down that thing in Las Vegas." He offered his hand. "Richard Thorpe. It's an honour and a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Carmichaels."
Howard, who'd been frowning at the guy, snapped his fingers. "Oh my God, of course, that's how I know you! Senator Thorpe!"
Penny stared at him. "What? Senator?!"
Thorpe cast a droll look at the stocky man in the sports coat. "And you didn't think any of them would recognize me, Jerome."
"Hey, he still didn't remember your name until you said it," said the stocky man in a gravelly voice. "I think my point stands."
"Jerome has a poor opinion of the civic engagement of most people in your generation," Thorpe explained to Penny, who managed an awkward smile in return. She never had shaken his hand, but with politician's aplomb Thorpe was affecting not to notice. He turned, went to the main table and took a seat of his own near its head. "Would you folks like to grab a chair? I think I can put in an order to rustle up some coffee, if anyone would like some."
"Oh, I'd counsel against that," said Sheldon. He came over to the table but with a rather deliberate haughtiness made no move to sit down. "Caffeine at this hour will only further disrupt the sleep cycle, and its effect on cognition is far more likely to impair it than enhance it."
"Speak for yourself, bubeleh," Howard shot back. He wheeled his chair back to the table and dropped into it. "I'll take something as hot and caffeinated as you can get."
Thorpe nodded, gestured one of the agents over and spoke to him in a low voice, then turned back to the group, gesturing them inwards. One by one, they found seats; even Sheldon, at last, sat down when Amy glared him into it. Thorpe leant forward and clasped his hands. "I don't think it'll come as any shock to any of you that the United States Government wants in on managing the metahuman phenomenon," he said. "We recognize that our first moves in that direction may have, well, overshot the mark—"
"You tried to lock us all up," said Penny bluntly.
"And from the sounds of it, some of the—what did you call us?—Primaries still are locked up," Raj chimed in. "At least according to Dr. Foxworth, who tells us Dr. Barry Kripke is still here, quite possibly involuntarily."
"I see," said Thorpe somberly. "Your upset is understandable. Is Dr. Kripke a close personal friend?"
That took the wind out of everybody's sails. Sheldon, Raj and Howard exchanged awkward glances, clearly trying to think of the right words. "He's . . . a colleague," Howard said at last.
"A respected colleague," Penny suggested hopefully. Her face fell as Sheldon, Raj and Howard all made uncomfortable hemming and hawing noises.
"He has a WHAMMO on his medical charts," said Lucy.
Thorpe frowned. "Is that bad?"
"Only for the female nurses," said Glenn dryly.
The stocky man, Jerome, knocked sharply on the table. "Can we get back to the subject at hand, please?" he demanded. "The upshot is, we're in the process of deploying a federal agency to serve as a clearinghouse, employer and coordinator for metahuman talents and research across the States. We'd like the most famous," he nodded to Penny, "and at this point most powerful metahumans known, to help us get it up and running by publicly joining."
Raj looked askance at Jerome with a frown. "It's not going to be called 'S.H.I.E.L.D.', is it?"
"What? No. No, we have a name already, it's just classified right now. The point is this." Jerome leant back in his chair and let out a long, exhausted sigh. "Based on our preliminary estimates, in the United States alone there could be as many as twelve to thirteen million people who either developed metahuman abilities after exposure to the Power Pulse, or are going to manifest those abilities within the next month. The majority of those are probably not going to be strong enough to be worth worrying about. But some of them are, and some of those may well have interests hostile to the people and the security of the United States. If we want to exercise any kind of civic restraint against hostile or criminal metahumans, it's pretty clear we're going to need friendly metahumans on our side."
Thorpe nodded. "Special Agent Belasco here is going to transfer from the Secret Service, and will be taking the position of Director for this agency. I'm going to serve as liaison with Congress and overseer for the Federal executive branch. And we're inviting you, Ms. Carmichaels—all of you—to join us." He leant back, then swept his hand around the room, encompassing all of them; his voice deepened. "You're in a position to make a real difference, for the future of those with abilities like you, and for all of us. To serve your country, and the world, in a way that only you can. You've already shown that you can be heroes when you need to be. Now you can be the heroes that the rest of us need." He held out his hand.
Lucy gulped and looked at Raj, who seemed equally gobsmacked. She wasn't sure what she found more flabbergasting—the idea that there could be, or soon would be, literally millions of people out there now with abilities like theirs, or the idea that she was one of the people being asked to step up and lead the way for those people. She was a web designer from Pasadena with crippling anxiety issues, for God's sake! What the hell did she know about leading people in anything? Much less about how to live with having superpowers? And how in God's name was she supposed to handle a job where she had to deal with strangers face-to-face, anyway?
Penny's expression seemed equally dazed. "Ummmm . . . ." she finally got out. "Wow. Gosh. Uh, thanks. But . . . I have to say, I'm not 100% sure I want to work for the people who tried to arrest me and my friends twice in the last two days."
She sat up, her resolve visibly strengthening. "I mean, okay, I haven't read all the comics that these guys have, but I keep hearing about all the stories where the government—uh, that's you guys, just to be clear—" She pointed at Belasco and Thorpe. "—where the government uses exactly the sort of system you're talking about to register everybody so it's easy to track us all down, once they decide we're more trouble than we're worth. Plus, if we're on your payroll, doesn't that kinda mean you'd expect us to obey your orders? 'Cause I gotta tell you, obedience was never high on my list of strengths."
"It's true," Amy interjected. "The only thing she ever decided about her wedding vows so far was that she didn't want the words 'honour and obey' in them."
Penny gave her a sour look. "The point is," she resumed, "I'm not gonna say yes to this without knowing exactly what's involved. And it's for damn sure I'm not gonna say yes unless Leonard's in too. Can we maybe pick this up once he's awake and I'm sure he's okay?"
"I think I have to agree with my colleague, Mr. Belasco," said Sheldon unexpectedly. His eyes met Penny's, and he gave her a stiff nod; Penny looked surprised at the gesture of respect, then blushed. "Dr. Hofstadter assisted me in designing the experiment that created meta-abilities in the first place. I don't see any way we can discuss things productively without his input." He looked around. "Howard, Raj, Amy—you would agree with that, I think?"
One by one, the others nodded. Thorpe absorbed that with no change of expression. "I appreciate your caution," he said at length. "In any other context I'd applaud you for it. But . . . Dr. Hofstadter is currently unconscious in this hospital. And we have no knowledge of when he's going to wake up. Or, indeed, if he is going to wake up—with apologies, my dear," he said with an inclined head to Penny, who looked furious. "The quicker you get in on this opportunity, my friends, the more effect you'll be able to have on how it shapes up. Do you really think reluctance, or resistance, is the most productive choice right now?"
Penny looked even angrier. "Was that a threat?" she demanded shrilly.
"Sure sounded like one to me," said Glenn, in a too-casual tone.
Belasco snorted. "Miss Carmichaels, when we make threats, you'll know it. That wasn't anything but a statement of reality. However powerful you guys are, choosing to be on the wrong side of the law's never a good idea. Metahumans are gonna have to live by rules, like the rest of us. Now you can have a voice in figuring out what those rules are . . . or you can give that voice up to somebody else. We got no contracts to sign here, guys. We just want to know. Are you in? Or out?"
Penny was still clearly infuriated, but as her eyes flicked from Belasco to Thorpe, it was clear she had no idea how to answer. Lucy couldn't blame her. She had none herself.
From outside, there came several crumpling thuds that sounded like sacks of potatoes hitting the floor. All the agents standing sentry around the room stiffened, turning to face the door, and several of them half-drew their weapons. The leader triggered his wrist mike. "D'Agostino, report. D'Agostino!"
"Agent D'Agostino isn't awake right now," came a voice through the slit between the double doors; a smoky contralto voice as powerful in its own way as Thorpe's, though less booming. "Neither are his two colleagues—I apologize, but it seemed quicker to temporarily sideline them rather than waste time haggling for permission. Richard, I know you're in there. Your agents are perfectly all right. Would you mind letting us in?"
Thorpe grimaced. "Ah, God." He looked at Belasco. "Can we legally throw her off the roof?"
The voice outside answered before Belasco could. "In five minutes, Richard, if you let me in, you won't want to."
Belasco's eyebrows went up. At last Thorpe sighed and waved wordlessly at the door. The Secret Service agents exchanged dubious looks but complied, opening it. Breanna Locke strode in, Bernadette trotting hastily at her side; behind them, before the doors swung closed again, Lucy could see the agents who'd been on guard outside, now sitting glaze-eyed and crumpled against the door frame much the same way Rozokov and his thugs had collapsed under the Camelot. If he likewise noticed, Howard didn't acknowledge it at all, only hurrying round the table to catch Bernadette up in another tight embrace. Bernadette let herself fold into his arms with a sigh. "Oh, Howie, it's so much nicer to hug you when you're not wearing body armour," she murmured.
"And this would be Dr. Rostenkowski-Wolowitz," said Thorpe, in the tone of one stating something he already knew. "Two questions for you, Doctor: one, what did you do to my security staff? And two, how the heck do you fit all that on your office door name-plate?"
"Oh. I cheat," said Bernadette, relaxing enough to turn but not stepping out of Howard's arms. "I just use the first initial 'B.' on my door. And I let people I like get away with calling me 'Dr. R-Dub'."
"R-Dub," repeated Raj, with a thoughtful look. "Hey, Bernadette, that could totally be your DJ name if you ever felt like changing careers."
"I actually tried once, in high school," said Bernadette. "Didn't work out. I didn't have enough arm's reach to handle more than one turntable at a time." She looked back at Thorpe. "And to answer your first question, I put your agents into a delta-wave state very similar to deep sleep. Physically they're perfectly fine."
"And before you start talking about assault charges, Richard," Locke interrupted, "bear in mind that you have absolutely no way to prove my client did anything to anybody, barring her statement just now, which I can easily get excluded under the Fifth Amendment. Why don't we let this slide for the moment, and get own to what we're really talking about here?"
Thorpe sighed. "And that would be, Breanna?"
"The only thing worth talking about, of course," said Locke, sitting down and completely ignoring the Secret Service agents glaring at her. "Power." She put her briefcase on the tabletop beside her, opened it, and brought out a laptop which she flipped open in turn. "And the fact that my clients are not prepared to submit to yours just because you tell them it makes most sense."
"So instead they're gonna submit to Latham Industries' power?" Belasco snorted. "Yeah, 'cause that's all kinds of a better deal right there."
Locke gave a tight, close-lipped smile. "Well, financially, it certainly could be. My clients wouldn't have the interest or aptitude to acquire all the, well, unofficial compensations that Mr. Thorpe and his colleagues can take advantage of."
"Hold it, hold it, hold it," said Penny, raising her hands. "We're not interested in submitting to anybody's power, not beyond what the law says we have to and what we choose to do. We want to help, we want to do the right thing, but we want the input into that." She looked at Locke. "Suppose we wanted to be, like, I don't know . . . ." She snapped her fingers in inspiration. "Freelance consultants, or something like that. Something where we would work with the government as we needed to but we didn't have to work for the government, unless some of us wanted to. How could we set that up?"
Locke nodded slowly, looking impressed. "That's actually not far from what I was going to suggest. The paperwork I've brought is the standard boilerplate for setting up an independent-contractor corporation, which would be created as its own business; the Senator here could then see about giving it a 'favoured contractor' designation in Congress . . . ."
"And this new company, not coincidentally," said Bernadette, her voice abruptly a lot sharper and harder, "would be a partially-owned subsidiary of Latham Industries, wouldn't it? Probably with a controlling ownership percentage?" She let go of Howard, strode to the table and dropped down, glaring at Locke. "And right of first refusal on patent ownership for any kind of technological or scientific innovation thereby created, too, I'm betting." She folded her arms. "I asked you in here to keep them from eating us alive, Ms. Locke. I'm not going to let you do the same thing."
"Uh—yeah," chimed in Howard, taking a seat beside Bernadette. "What she said."
Locke returned Bernadette's glower, then glanced at Thorpe, who gave a very slight grin. She sighed. "This is going to be a very detailed and time-consuming exercise, Dr. Rostenkowski."
Deliberately, Bernadette put her hand on Howard's. "That's Dr. Rostenkowski-Wolowitz," she enunciated. Howard blinked at her, and a delighted smile grew on his face. "And I can stay awake and alert all night if I have to, Ms. Locke, Senator. Fringe benefit of enhanced regeneration. Now let's quit jabbering around and get down to business." She looked over at Penny. "But she's right, this is gonna take a long time and be very boring. If you wanted to get out of here and go back home, you could."
Penny shook her head. "I'm going back downstairs to wait in Leonard's room. I want to be the first thing he sees when he wakes up." She looked at Sheldon. "What about you, Sheldon? You want to chime in? Contract negotiations—just your favourite thing ever."
"Oh." Sheldon blinked, seeming to come out of a daze. "I wasn't aware you were soliciting my input."
Penny smirked. "We weren't, but since when has that ever stopped you?"
"Well now." Sheldon looked pleased. "It has been a while since I've had the opportunity to get into a good wrangle over legal terminology . . . ." He was already half on his feet as if to move around the table to where Locke was sitting. Then he stopped, blinking, as if something had just occurred to him, and looked at Amy, who had slumped down in her chair and looked more than half-asleep. Her hair straggled limply down over her face.
A bemused expression came over his face. He slowly sat back down. "But—I think perhaps I should take Amy home first." He pointed at Thorpe. "That's contingent on nobody trying to break down anybody's door and arrest us any more, correct?"
Thorpe nodded. "I think the counterproductiveness of that approach has finally sunk into a few peoples' heads, back in Washington," he said dryly. "Go home, Dr. Cooper. Take Dr. Fowler with you. We'll be in touch." He glanced at Locke and Bernadette. "Assuming I still have my testicles after this negotiation is over, that is."
The corner of Locke's mouth twitched. Bernadette smiled sweetly. Lucy shared a glance of wordless understanding with Raj and raised her hand. "Um—Sheldon? Any chance we could catch a lift too?"
Sheldon sighed. "Well, yes, of course. Lucy, I'll need to get your address and work out the coordinates for a contiguity . . . ." He looked abruptly quizzical. "I wonder if this is how Leonard felt when all of you kept getting him to run driving errands for you?"
"How all of us—?!" began Raj, incensed, but broke off as Lucy raised her hand again. "No," she said. "No, Sheldon, you don't. Just take Raj and me to his place. Please."
Her face felt like it had caught fire as everybody, even Raj, turned to stare at her. But she didn't take her gaze from Sheldon, who alone showed no astonishment, only a calm, curious raised eyebrow, as if to say: Are you certain? She nodded.
Sheldon shrugged. "Very well, then."
235 PARSONS STREET, APARTMENT #314, GLENDALE, CA
SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 2015, 12:28 A.M.
Sheldon was exercising extra care with his transport, and it paid off in the surreal precision of the result. After opening a contiguity to Raj's apartment and leaving him and Lucy there, he drew his next portal by using Raj's front door; when he opened it, it revealed Amy's own apartment, as if the two units had somehow been built connected face to face with one another. Feeling like she was sleepwalking, or dreaming, or maybe caught in an episode of Sheldon's beloved Doctor Who, Amy walked through the contiguity and into her apartment.
The surreal feeling wasn't coming only from the impossible twists in space and time, however, or the blurriness of the world without her glasses, or even from the sheer fatigue of the day.
She hadn't had the chance to apologize to Raj for what she'd done; she hadn't meant to, and she was fairly certain he didn't even realize what had happened. But when she'd grabbed his arm to calm him down, after realizing the anger between her and Sheldon had overwhelmed his empathic senses, that by-now familiar zing had shot through her. And an instant later, her entire brain had opened up like a flower blossoming in sunlight.
Suddenly the air around her had seemed to come alive, resonating with every sense she had and a few she didn't: ripples of warmth against her skin, subliminal sounds vibrating behind her eardrum, tingles in her nerve endings like the kind she imagined pigeons must feel when navigating by the Earth's magnetic field. And all of it combined into one impossible awareness. She felt Lucy's nervousness like a gnarled knot of ice in her gut; she felt Bernadette's weariness like cold, congealing cement behind the cloak of perky alertness; she felt Penny's burning, jagged fury at the way their competing recruiters were treating them like prize stallions in a horsefair. Against that was the slow-brightening glow of Howard's cautious optimism that somehow this might all work out after all, the mix of worry and reluctant excitement like sour tonic water from Glenn, and the stomach-twisting coil of amazed delight and alarmed self-doubt within Raj as Lucy asked to come home with him. The cool, machinelike purpose of Locke; the ambition, intensity and—weirdly—idealistic hope from Thorpe and Belasco. And from Sheldon . . . .
. . . from Sheldon, almost nothing.
The emotions were there. She could sense them the way one might dimly make out that a conversation was happening at the far end of the room while an industrial-grade air conditioner roared in your ears . . . able to tell their presence, but knowing their meaning was almost impossible. For the first time since she'd known him, it truly came home to her what it must really be like to live with Sheldon's brain: a constant, ongoing thunder of mental activity, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous but never ceasing, moving at a speed most people couldn't even imagine. More simply to get away from it than for any other reason, she walked blindly towards her bedroom, half-aware of Sheldon querulously asking her something but having no idea what it was.
Her spare glasses were in her bedside drawer, as they always were. Putting them on, the world sprang back into clarity, and she felt her own mood stabilize. She fought back the weight of Sheldon's mind, sitting down on the bed with a deep breath.
"Amy?" For a change, Sheldon sounded uncertain. He had followed her to her bedroom door, but no further, and stood there with his arms folded awkwardly. "Are you all right? Are you still suffering . . . symptoms . . . from the contiguity backlash?"
She shook her head. "No. No, I . . . I accidentally transferred Raj's empathy to myself, back there at the hospital. I've never experienced his power before. It's . . . a little overwhelming."
"Oh." Sheldon's eyebrows went up, then down in an annoyed look. "Well, that's aggravating. Given I'm the closest mind in your perceptions at the moment, that can only mean my emotional control isn't at the level to which I aspire. I'll remove myself from your presence immediately." He nodded.
"No! No, Sheldon, wait. Don't go." Amy reached out, holding out her hand, stopping him as he lifted his hand to begin drawing another gateway. "Please stay with me. I'm, uh . . . I'm in distress, and under the relationship agreement, the Boyfriend must provide support and counsel to the Girlfriend in these circumstances."
"Well, yes, but if it's my presence which is causing you distress, by your own admission . . . ."
Amy wanted to cry or scream, she wasn't sure which; perhaps both. "Sheldon, for heaven's sake, can you stop trying to think this through logically and just . . . be with me? Please?"
At that, something flared through the mind-noise, and Amy caught it almost gratefully: a bright, jagged spike of true, frustrated anger. Sheldon threw up his hands. "I'm sorry, Amy, but how am I supposed to help you when nobody can explain to me how? This doesn't make any sense! How can you want me to stay if it's me who's causing you the distress?" The anger corkscrewed inward, suddenly, letting out an acid spray of pain as it dug back into Sheldon's own mind. "By all rights, given the danger you've been through tonight, you shouldn't want to have anything further to do with me," he muttered. "It was my experiment that brought everything to pass."
Amy fought hard for control. "That . . . yes, that's logical. But it's not what I want. I know it doesn't make any sense, Sheldon. But . . . love doesn't, always."
Sheldon sighed. "Everybody says that," he grumped. "But nobody ever explains it. Sometimes I just wish I could know, the way everybody else claims to . . . ."
And suddenly Amy remembered something that had happened two days ago—the last time she'd seen Sheldon display something that looked like real feeling. She gulped. She didn't want to do what Raj had done then. But maybe . . . maybe there was finally a way to bridge this gap between them. She put her hands in her lap, smoothed down her skirt, then patted the quilt beside her. "Sheldon . . . please come here and sit down. I think—I think I might be able to show you what I mean."
Sheldon's brows lowered in visible suspicion, but after a moment, he came over and joined her on the bed. "If you need a whiteboard to draw diagrams, I can pop back to my apartment for a spare," he offered.
Amy choked back an urge to laugh. "No—no, it's not going to be that kind of demonstration. Please bear with me, I've never done this before." She took his hand and closed her eyes. With a few deep breaths, she did her best to slow her racing heart. She tried to call up, in mind and skin, gut and body, everything Sheldon had made her feel; all the things she'd thought she'd never feel, all the things that at first she'd thought never to need even in Sheldon's friendship. Had it been knowing Penny that had changed things? Meeting Zack? Seeing what Penny and Leonard had, or Howard and Bernadette? She didn't know. All she knew was what she felt now.
And as carefully, as gently as she could, she let it well out of her, radiating forth to envelop Sheldon's mind, that glorious, beautiful mind.
Nothing seemed to happen for several long heartbeats. But slowly Sheldon's eyes widened; his mouth fell open in what she could now tell was only sheer confusion. Me? she could almost hear him asking himself. She feels all that . . . for me? He stared at her as if he'd never seen her before. His hand came up to cup her cheek; she leaned helplessly into the touch, closing her eyes. She didn't need to see his face now.
She could feel his mind moving like the muscles of a high-strung stallion might flex beneath a stroking, gentling hand, impossibly powerful and smooth. She held nothing back, but let it all flow into him, over them both, even the flaws and frustrations. But encompassing and transfiguring them all was that simple, primal, elemental need. I'm not complete without you any more, Sheldon, she thought, knowing he would understand even if the words didn't translate. It doesn't matter if we hurt one another. Not having you here hurts worse than anything else. Amy reached out, trying to find the answering echo of need in him—
—and hit something that felt like a glass wall. With a gasp, she recoiled, breaking contact; she opened her eyes and found Sheldon's face less than an inch from hers. He had clearly been leaning in for a kiss that she hadn't even seen. He jerked back, startled. "Amy? Amy, what's wrong?"
"I don't—I don't know," she gasped. Her heart was rabbiting; she pressed her chest with one hand, as if trying to force it to slow down. "I felt—I felt something in your mind . . . ."
"Well, there is a lot in there to feel," said Sheldon, a little smugly.
"No! No, I don't mean like something you were thinking, or feeling, it was—it felt like some kind of barrier, or block."
Sheldon frowned. "You mean like a shield of some kind? Well, that's not so odd. I have a very unique mind; perhaps I have mental defenses even I don't know about."
"No, Sheldon, you don't understand. I don't think this would work to keep things out, not like that; I don't know what it is, I . . . ." Amy trailed off. The thought that had occurred to her made no sense. She didn't even know if it was possible. "Sheldon—may I scan you again?"
For the first time Sheldon looked a little worried. Perhaps he was finally grasping how serious she was. "Yes, all right," he said simply. She put one hand to his face, and suddenly he almost giggled. "Amy—can I ask you something? Can you do it like the Vulcan mind meld?"
Amy rolled her eyes. "Sheldon, for God's sake—!"
"Please?" Sheldon implored. "Please please please? It's the closest I'll ever get to experiencing what it's really like, and I'd really far rather it was you than Raj. For all his professed hatred of Indian food, he still smells a little like coriander. I don't like coriander."
Amy gave in with a sigh. "Fine. Show me how Spock does it again?" She let him adjust her hand's position until he was satisfied, with her thumb on his chin, her index finger above the point between eye and nose, and her middle finger on his eyebrow. "Okay, let's see if I can find this again . . . ."
"Nooooo," said Sheldon, drawing it out. "You have to do it properly. Like Spock does. Remember, I showed you in the Classic Star Trek episode 'Mirror, Mirror'? You liked that one because you thought Leonard Nimoy looked hot with a goatee." Then he winced. "Oh. Oh, wow, so that's what it feels like when you're angry . . . Okay, um, well. Never mind."
Amy took a deep breath. An odd impulse of mischief seized her, and she found herself smiling. Deliberately, she made her voice as deep as she could and leant in, their faces almost nose to nose. "My mind—to your mind," she intoned in a husky murmur. "My thoughts—to your thoughts . . . ."
Sheldon broke out in a stunned grin of delight. "Oh, Amy," he whispered—and without warning he leaned forward and kissed her, hard. His own shock at the impulse and the contact resounded between them like feedback through a speaker. Then all conscious intent was swept away as her own passion ignited and spilled back into him, and for the first time in Sheldon's entire life—she could feel the utter absence of any memory echo in his brain—his body took over. He grabbed her shoulders, clumsily but fiercely, and she snaked her arms around his neck; they fell back onto the bed together, caught up in one another, writhing together in a blind frenzied heat. Amy had forgotten what she was looking for, had forgotten everything. Nothing mattered but the softness of Sheldon's mouth on hers as they opened together, the feel of his body under her hands as she dug frantically to worm her way beneath his shirt, the glorious weight, warmth and pressure of him on top of her as she ground her hips into his . . . .
And then something—snapped. Like a castle portcullis crashing down onto a galloping horse and breaking its back, the glass wall she'd hit in Sheldon's mind sliced with brutal force through the currents of arousal, almost physically knocking them apart. Sheldon jerked back, stunned, the backlash of the disruption spiralling into revulsion; she was still so closely linked that she felt it herself, and it took a few gasping seconds to master it. Mouth agape, Sheldon touched his head as he sat up. "Amy?" he whispered. "Did you do that?"
"No! God, no! Of course not! How could you even—?!" In mid-tirade Amy caught herself, remembering her suspicion, her impossible dread. "Wait. Sheldon . . . now I remember what I wanted to see." She sat up as well, bracing herself for refusal. "I know this is very difficult for you, but—can you remember how you used to feel, about things like coitus? How you still feel when it's anybody but me? Just . . . bring it to mind. For me. So I can see what's happening."
Sheldon nodded, gaining control of himself with a shuddering breath. "All right," he husked. "I don't think it'll surprise you that the concept's still difficult for me . . . ." He closed his eyes, taking one deep breath, then another. Amy could feel his heart rate slow. As delicately as she could, she let her mind open up again, listening through the whir of his brain for the feelings underneath.
And there it was. As he contemplated the subject, she could feel the glass wall coalescing again in his brain—an ancient reflex, deep-set as sequoia roots; a reaction that stifled anything like lust or desire, a built-in killing trap that shattered the impulse before it ever reached the conscious mind and turned it into annoyed, repulsed disdain. She recognized that feeling: she'd shared it, once, before time and curiosity—and Sheldon and Penny, both in their own ways—had made her realize how much of it was only sublimated sour-grapes envy and transferred maternal fear. But this was far deeper, and far more profound. This was beyond any parental browbeating. This was so deeply buried that it had to have been . . . implanted—yes, implanted; this was not the natural asexuality of those whose neurochemistry simply didn't respond to sexual stimuli like most did, she could somehow tell intuitively that this was an artificial, constructed program—when Sheldon was a child, perhaps even an infant. Maybe even—though she had no idea how this could be possible—before birth.
"Amy?" Sheldon was staring at her, his eyes bright with fear. "What is it?"
Amy moistened her lips, slowly. And then told him. It took her a minute or so, and when she finished, the bedroom was quiet for a long time.
Finally Sheldon broke the silence, his voice even and controlled. "Amy, you realize what this implies, of course. And that it's impossible. But . . . I think if you were lying . . . I would know."
Amy nodded, taking no offense. She wouldn't have wanted to believe it either. "The kind of mental tampering that this seems to be shouldn't have been possible at all before the Power Pulse created meta-abilities," she confirmed. "And if it were, who would tamper with your brain when you were so young? How could they know who you were, or who you'd grow up to be? And if for some reason they felt they had to do this . . . why this? Why not, I don't know, just generally repress your intelligence? Or implant a compulsion to self-destructive behaviour, like addiction? Who would care about your attitude towards intimate relationships?"
"I don't know," said Sheldon meditatively. His emotional aura felt strange, like a roiling cloud of light gradually polarizing into something bright and clear. "But what I do know is that what I thought, all my life, was an independent reasoned judgement about the superiority of rational thought . . . was being influenced, all along, by a programmed reflex I never suspected was there. And I could have lived with that, because honestly, Amy, for the most part, that reflex just matched how I honestly felt about most people." He looked thoughtful. "Leonard's mother Beverly would probably say that's why the reflex became so powerful—because it was working with my natural instincts and not against them."
"That does make sense," admitted Amy. Then she froze. Because Sheldon had put his hand on hers, and the look in his eyes—the feel of his mind—was something she never thought she'd see.
"But whoever did this to me, Amy," Sheldon went on in a low voice, "they did something unforgiveable. Because they made it easy for me to hurt you. I'm not," he paused, dropping his eyes, "I'm not putting it all on this thing that seems to be in my head. I'm aware that I am . . . difficult to be with, in many ways. But I might have been less difficult—I might have found being with you easier—if this hadn't been there. It might not have taken me so long to tell you, to understand for myself, that I loved you."
Amy wondered if she'd dropped her glasses again without realizing it. The world seemed to be getting blurry once more. Then wetness spilled down her cheeks. She caught her breath and gulped back the sob. If Raj was any example, losing control of her emotions would only make Sheldon cry, and Sheldon crying was a hassle she really didn't want. "Sheldon . . . ." she husked.
"And I'm not going to let this influence my judgement. Not any more." Sheldon's voice firmed. His hand tightened on hers. "I'm going to review the evidence for myself and decide." He turned to face her, putting his other hand on top of their joined ones. "Amy Farrah Fowler—would you do me the very great honour of assisting me in this experiment, by participating in coitus with me?"
Amy clapped her free hand to her mouth. Her brain seemed to have dissolved. It took everything she had just to hold on to the overwhelming boil of feelings surging up inside her, as if her skin was stretched tight. When words finally came, she almost kicked herself for what they were. "Sheldon . . . are you—are you sure? We don't—we don't have to; it might be safer to wait—to try more tests, first—"
"No." Sheldon shook his head. "No more tests. No more waiting. You're the only person I trust enough to let into my mind—you're the only person who can help me do this. Logically, there is absolutely no reason to defer confronting the problem directly. And . . . I don't want to." His gaze softened. "Amy, if there was one thing I learned from today, it's that none of us can count on tomorrow any more. Penny is sitting in a hospital room tonight desperately hoping and praying that the love of her life will wake up. I don't want to be in a room like that tomorrow, regretting what never happened tonight.
"Help me, Amy Farrah Fowler. You're my only hope."
Amy couldn't hold back the tears any more. She opened her mouth to say Yes, yes, God, a thousand times yes . . . and stopped at the twinkle in his eye. Memory suddenly stirred. Then she caught her breath and hit him hard on the shoulder. "You bastard!" she howled. "That's from Star Wars!"
Sheldon gave his breathless snicker. "Yes, yes it is," he admitted with a bazinga-style grin. "I'm sorry, I really just couldn't resist—" He never finished the sentence. Amy bowled him over, throwing herself on top of him and rolling them to the centre of the bed, half laughing, half weeping. Her mind slid back into his, and his into hers, with effortless smoothness; she cupped his face with her hands and drank his kisses. Prepared for it this time, she caught the glass wall inside his brain as it came sliding down. She didn't attempt to force it open, or break it—that might well cause damage beyond her ability to sense or heal. Instead, she only held it steady, where they could both feel its pressure. Carefully, she found a balance point inside their fused minds, easing her head back from Sheldon to look into his eyes.
Without words, she asked: Are you sure? Without words, he answered, Yes.
"This . . . may take time," she whispered aloud. And almost burst into tears again at the single word he gave in answer:
"Good."
1:42 A.M.
It did take time. It was not elegant or effortless, or entirely pain-free, for either of them. It was neither graceful, nor visually acrobatic in any way, nor even particularly noisy, though Amy did cry out loudly at several points, and at the end Sheldon's breath shuddered to a choked groan that sounded almost agonized. They lay, at last, entwined together, sweaty and in several places sticky, their breath slowing.
"How do you feel?" Amy finally whispered.
Sheldon frowned at her, though he was still smiling. "You're the empath right now, Dr. Fowler. You should be able to tell."
Amy shook her head, not even annoyed. "I think my neurons are too flooded with endorphins at the moment," she admitted. "There was definitely some empathic feedback going on, though. I think we should probably try this again when I haven't copied Raj's abilities, and see if it works as well."
"Again? Really?" Sheldon's nose crinkled. "We've successfully confirmed that the programmed reflex doesn't physically prevent carnal expression, I don't see the point in repetition—oh." His mouth tightened. "That's the reflex again. Isn't it."
Amy nuzzled his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Sheldon. Look, for what it's worth . . . it's okay just not to have the same sex drive as other people. Honestly, right now, I'm kinda willing to take what I can get."
"Oh, that's just the afterglow endorphins again." Sheldon waved a dismissive hand. "You'd agree to watch a Battlestar Galactica marathon with me right now if I asked you nicely enough."
Amy snorted. "You'd need a lot more afterglow for that, I think."
Sheldon blinked. "Is that a request? I might have to wait a few minutes for my refractory cycle to conclude, but . . . ."
For half a second Amy was strongly tempted, not least because it was the first time Sheldon's relentless literal-mindedness might be redounding in her favour. Then a massive yawn swept across her, and she reconsidered. "No," she said when she finished. "I'm not sure either of us would be up to that. But . . . whenever, if you ever, feel like doing this again—just know you can pretty much count on me saying yes. So don't be afraid to ask. Wherever, whenever."
"Oh, I know. And I won't," said Sheldon blithely. He yawned as well. "I look forward to further research into my brain, Dr. . . . Fowler . . . ." His eyes fluttered closed, and he rolled over, draping one long arm across her shoulders. Amy smiled, snuggled into him, and closed her own eyes.
A second before sleep took her, one last disturbing thought floated into clarity. This was Sheldon Cooper, after all, the man who had no problems discussing his bowel movements in public. Maybe I shouldn't have said wherever, whenever . . . .
. . . but oh hell, who cared?
Author's Note: Following up on my Warning note above, I hope my waffling now makes sense: the idea that Sheldon's comparatively minimal interest in sex is due to actual interference with his mind deep in his past was a plot twist I introduced solely for the sake of an epic adventure story involving our heroes getting superpowers, and as a way to bring Sheldon and Amy together using one particular power as part of their story. This "explanation" of Sheldon's character applies only to this version of him in this story, and should not be taken as any sort of implication about Sheldon in canon or any other story, or about people in real life who share that particular difference of priority in relationships. Nor should it be taken as notice that Sheldon and Amy are about to jump into the kind of sexual shenanigans in which so many M-rated fics indulge—I want to keep this story T-rated, for starters, and I also enjoy very much the unique relationship between the two in the show and want to keep my version as much like that as possible. As always, I write solely for entertainment purposes; any failure to entertain is my fault, and I wish disappointed readers the best of luck in their search for entertainment they like.