Sorry about the delay, Life happened. I hope you like this chapter, kind of uneventful, but it sets the ground work for A LOT. (The asterisk is a foot note)

{Sheldon}

Alison knocked on the door, for some reason she only knocked three times. It was incomplete, she just keeps going with life, but she never finished knocking. He couldn't stand to think that she hadn't finished. He had to do it for her every time.

"Alison if you are going to knock like that you have to finish it," He scolded as he opened the door.

"So I should knock differently?" She asked.

"No, just finish the knock when you start it!" He exclaimed walking out the door.

Alison had a travel coffee cup that Sheldon knew to be full of tea, Alison's mystery tea with sugar. If he hadn't been so upset the first time she had made it he couldn't picture him not disliking it. It was different, but it was better than tolerable. Almost enjoyable. It had been the attitude of the moment, yes that was it, nothing could have made his life worse then, so he didn't even think about the tea.

Now it made him think about Alison. He didn't quite know why but he liked that, she deserved a place in his mind, with physics, comic books, star trek, and everyone else in his life. She was clearly capable of learning the routine; she was capable of remembering things, she was analytical, she was scientific. She wasn't so bad, as far as strangers go she was teachable. Maybe even worth teaching.

As they entered the car she asked, "So what task do you choose to thrust upon me this morning?" in reference to the car games he always initiated in the mornings.

"If you are familiar with the periodic table we could play a game where I name an element and you have to name another that starts with the same letter that the last one ended with, without repeating any elements," He proposed.

"Ummm, that couldn't possibly work… There are only 9 letters that elements end with, but there are elements that start with every letter bu and W."* She was good. Penny hadn't caught that, not that he had expected her to, but he didn't think Alison would get it either. He couldn't help but be a little bit impressed.

{Alison}

"You are the first person who has ever caught that…"Sheldon said, he was almost smiling.

"Really?" She asked in disbelief. She was being validated by Sheldon, the way everyone acted that was rare. She was sure that this counted as being friends. She had been driving him to work, they played chess yesterday, he had come to her for advice, and she planned to confide in him. She hadn't ever been fully aware of the rules governing the phases of relational existence. She could assume he didn't either, that could make things really awkward, or so perfect it didn't seem real. She would shoot for perfect. That meant that she had to turn off all of her observations of human social structures and write a whole new set of rules. Maybe it was time. She could handle something permanent now, she was out of college. She knows what it's like now.

They hardly spoke more than a few words the rest of the way to work. She was thinking about her team, and well, all she knew was that he was thinking. When she got upstairs to the lab she was the first one there, as usual. She could hardly believe that they had been hired, they didn't love their job like she did, they hadn't dreamed of this since the 6th grade, there were only three doctors on the team. The others were just here because they knew the minimum amount of information for a position on a team. They might as well just be paid interns.

That was about how effective they are. "Here goes everything," she whispered as Lori, her only teammate who responded to anything stepped into the room. She wasn't nearly as late as the others. They hardly bothered to show up. Maybe they really were just interns, no, interns had a reason to care they were being graded.

"So virus observation, Lori and I will get the samples out of the test tubes, and onto a microscope slide. I need Martha to turn on the lab equipment. Jake, if you think you can handle it you can take the first look into the microscope," She started to delegate jobs. Jake sneezed 7 times in a row. "Jake, I need you to step outside. You may contaminate our specimens. There's a conference room down the hall, you can go sit there," She had no fear of germs, they just were, but not today, she was working with genetically modified Adenovirus, she couldn't let it spread to the public. Sure it had been altered to have a shorter lifespan; the virus would die out on its own, even given the perfect environment for reproduction, each infectious agent would die before it got very far. It wasn't harmless, and still extremely contagious, but symptoms would be shorter.

After she spread the contents of the test tube onto a fresh microscope slide she immediately used hand sanitizer. This was dangerous, her oblivious teammates wouldn't think about it that way but she knew how vitally important it was that Caltech not be responsible for an end of summer epidemic. 'That would be GREAT publicity, and they totally wouldn't fire us, we are totally not disposable.' She thought sarcastically. Tossing the hand sanitizer bottle into her purse she looked through the lenses of the microscope at dozens of miniscule sub-living things.

{Stewart}

He sat behind the desk at the comic book store thinking about Amy. They had hung out all weekend. It had been awesome, but this Monday was hitting him hard. He had an amazing weekend, but it was over, and he would have to sit through a whole dismal week before he could do it again. It had been more exciting that the entire time he was in high school. They had kissed, multiple times, watched three different movies, all of which Amy said she loved. They weren't officially boyfriend/girlfriend, but it wouldn't be long.

Amy was amazing. Her soft, straight brown hair, her intelligent eyes, her smile, she was a special kind of pretty. She knew things he could never hope to know, he would never be a doctor, but that didn't matter to her. He could follow her conversations and remember enough of what she said to be worth talking to, and he'd learn to live knowing he would never be as smart as her. It wouldn't be hard, all but one of his best friends were doctors. As long as she didn't care than it would all be fine. He watched the seconds tick away. Soon she would be going to lunch he imagined her eating lunch, probably including chicken, and a bottled beverage of some sort. It reminded him of their boardwalk picnic.

He was too deep in thought to notice the customer that walked in. "Amy?" he mumbled to the stranger, who happened to be male.

{Alison}

Lunch was uneventful; she was late and missed Sheldon, though thankful that she hadn't crashed into him again. She had wanted to see him, but it would have to wait for the car ride home. The rest of her day was a pain in the rear. They got next to nowhere. She managed to get a video from through the microscope. She would have them look at it later. She wanted to have something worth presenting at the convention. She wanted to stand up in front of all of the interested scientists of America and announce her capability, she wanted something good to come out of such a terrible team, at least she could get to tell America about the project, to prove her worth.

She would never feel like she was good enough. Even if she made a huge discovery that would change the field of genetics forever it wouldn't be a life fulfilling accomplishment, she was so insecure. She was afraid of making a mistake, the only thing that kept her from letting that fear stop her from doing anything was the part that reminded her that she had to be worth something. She had a doctorate, most people she had ever known would say that she had made it, her dreams were achieved and she had no reason to worry so much about failing. She didn't feel that way; no matter what she did she couldn't believe she would ever be more than one mistake away from failing.

On the other hand she was almost fearless; sometimes for some things she could turn a blind eye on danger and do something crazy. She had to learn to live there. Sheldon was the opposite kind of fearless; he didn't care what people thought about him. She cared too much. He would voice his opinion no matter what the risk. She walked to his office door.

(Three knocks) "Sheldon?"

-Nine second pause-

"Oh yeah!" (Three knocks) "Sheldon,"

(Three knocks) "Sheldon"

He opened the door with that half smile that she had come to like. That smile meant that she did something right.

"Ready to go?" She asked as she fished around in her purse for her car keys. She found them and picked up the little rubber sea urchin attached to the key ring by a series of macramé knots that she though resembled the double helix twist of DNA strands. As many times as she told her close friends that no one ever saw it. High School, the North High Sea Urchin extreme cheer team, walking down the stairs that was all she could think of.

"Purple, Gold, and White, Urchins let's Fight!" The cheer replayed in her mind. The short skirt and crop top. The only school team with such a uniform. These were the girls who did halftime, pep rallies, and practiced at a non-school gym. The girls who did the "Crazy Flips" all had more than a back handspring. The team that forced her to walk the line between the two halves of herself.

{Leonard}

Crap. It was takeout night. He wouldn't be getting home until about an hour after Sheldon and Alison. He needed to call her and get her to pick up the usual order.

"Alison, Yes, Hi, I need you to stop and pick up the Thai food Take Out. It's Siam Palace, nothing with peanuts or peanut oil for Howard, wait, Sheldon knows this… Forks, they are acceptable for eating Thai food, but they have to have four tines. Otherwise it's a trident." He frantically instructed her over the phone. He knew she would do fine. Alison had an impeccable memory. "Raj is having car problems. He is going to be late, but not as late as I am. Thank You so much!" He finished and made a mental note to pay Alison back for the food.

He set the phone down and got back to adjusting the laser settings.

{Alison}

"Hey, that was Leonard; he wants me to take you to get the Thai food from Siam Palace. Where is that?" She explained the phone call. He seemed a bit irritated at her for not knowing, but he still explained. They weren't complicated directions; it was almost on the way home.

She and Sheldon were the first ones there. She found that slightly odd considering the food stop.

"So now what?" She asked standing in the hallway.

"Well in Leonard's absence someone needs to help set up." He explained as if it should have been obvious.

"Okay, but I DVRed an episode of Cheer Perfection over a month ago, I kind of planned to watch that tonight, so I can't stay for too long." She replied, accepting his blunt request for her assistance, as she followed him inside. She set all of the food on the coffee table and gathered forks, counting the tines. She paused, as she realized that she really never thought about this before.

"What's wrong?" Sheldon asked impatiently.

"I've never thought about fork tines. Leonard says you don't like 3 tined forks…" She explained, realizing that she had made an idiot of herself. 'What kind of idiot stares at forks?' She scolded herself silently.

"A three tined fork is a trident, tridents are meant for ruling the ocean," He justified Leonard's statement, Alison took his to mean that he was offended, or creeped out. She assumed she had messed everything up, she had to fix it, she had to correct her words.

"Yeah, that makes complete sense. I just haven't ever thought about it… You are totally right…" She forced herself to stop talking. Biting the inside of her lip she suddenly remembered that she had borrowed Sheldon's hand sanitizer that morning.

"Hey, I forgot to give this back to you." She said as she handed the hand sanitizer to Sheldon, setting the fork on top of his food container. As she walked back into the kitchen she zipped up her backpack, getting mica dust all over her hand. She blows the shimmery white eye shadow powder up, it blows noticeably into the air. Not wanting to feed the others eye shadow she washes her hands before she set three forks out onto the three remaining containers.

"Have a nice dinner!" She exclaimed as she walked out of the apartment. She passed Howard in the hallway. She simply waved, though she wasn't sure he noticed. She would finally have a solo night. Just herself and the electronics that composed the world around her. It had been too long; she had spent her weekend in front of her GPS trying to find a suitable grocery store, which was a nightmare. Apparently no one has Swedish breakfast tea. She only had two tea bags left that she had brought with her. Not to mention that her region's convenience store would be irreplaceable. It's a good thing she had been driving Sheldon to work or she would have lost it by now.

California was certainly different.

{Later}

Alison snapped up, she had nearly cleared the DVR list of all of the old episodes of Cheer Perfection, slamming the pause button, she leapt for the door. She had missed something really important. She stood at her neighbor's door until her watch read 9:02. Whispering she softly knocked:

(Three knocks) "Leonard?"

(Three Knocks) "Leonard,"

(Three Knocks) "Leonard"

He answered the door, eyes closed saying, "Sheldon, I thought you were in bed, and why are you whispering?" Then he saw her, "Alison. I really thought you were Sheldon. You were whispering, I couldn't get the tone of your voice, plus, um…" he tried to explain.

"It's fine, and Sheldon doesn't like it when I only knock three times and say a name once," She answered the unasked question, "I can explain, but not in here. Come to the lobby."

*Yes that is correct I counted. Again I promise Raj doesn't stay in the background forever.

The plot bunnies are tearing my limbs off. No quantity of pastel colored candy will tempt them to put me down for an hour so I can type.

Swedish Breakfast tea is not a real thing.

Happy Easter to all and to all a good night!