Author's Note: So, its definitely been a hot minute (almost 3 years? yikes.) since my last update. Sorry about that. The vibes just really have not been vibing, I guess. Mental and physical illness is bothersome at best, but I've been doing my best. I have been writing as often as the muses allow, not just on Like Magic, but other fics as well, and I've been working on a poetry book that I hope to publish some time next year.

Anyway, on to the story. As the titles suggests, this isn't a proper next chapter, but more of an interlude. Because I've changed two or three major plot points in TBBT, and changed some pairings, it also changes a bunch of little things in the overall story. Whiling writing a while back, I had the idea to make little one-shots detailing some of those changes. These interludes won't happen too frequently, as I have plans for somewhere between five and ten of them, but I thought it was a good writing experiment.
I know haven't always been great about keeping my next chapter promises, but I do hope to have the next 'real' chapter of Like Magic out at the end of this week, or sometime next week.

Til next time,

DH.

P.S.: As always, if you see any mistakes, please don't hesitate to let me know. I greatly appreciate any reviews, follows, or favs.

Enjoy.

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Interlude: Woah, Who Ordered All These Hotdogs?

"Don't send him away, let him in," a woman's voice called from inside his apartment and Raj cringed internally.

"Who is that?" Howard asked, sounding confused.

"I…bought a parrot," Raj tried to lie, saying the first thing that came to mind, cringing again at how fake that excuse sounded, even to him.

"Yeah, right," Howard scoffed, pushing the door open and budging Raj out of his way. Raj allowed it, looking down sheepishly as he stuck his hands in his pockets.

"Doctor Plimpton?"

"Hi. It's Howard, right?" she asked, setting her glass of wine down on the coffee table.

"Uh…Yeah."

"Can I ask you a question, Howard? Do you like roleplaying games?" The question confused both Raj and Howard, but Elizabeth Plimpton was just smiling blandly, waiting for an answer.

"Yeah, sure," Howard answered, a little hesitantly, before he straightened his shoulders and smirked slightly – his go-to look when he was trying to act suave. "In fact, I'm a dungeon master."

"Not tonight," Elizabeth said cheerfully. "Tonight, you are a…delivery man. You brought soup, but uh-oh! Raj and I don't have enough to pay you! So, we'll have to come to some other kind of arrangement?"

She stared at them, her smile a mix between coy and sheepish.

"Beg pardon?" Howard asked quietly, his voice cracked at the end in his shock. Raj, on the other hand, had his gaze on the ground, similarly surprised at the bold suggestion she was making.

Clearly not reading the hesitancy from either man, Elizabeth hopped up out of her seat excitedly. "You two figure out the details, I'm gonna go change into something I don't mind getting ripped off my milky flesh."

And with that, she was gone, rushed off to the bedroom.

"What the frak?" Howard exclaimed as soon as the door closed, and Raj shrugged helplessly.

"Go away," he suggested after a moment, panicking slightly. "She wants New Delhi, not kosher deli! Besides, you have a girlfriend!?"

"We broke up weeks ago," Howard said defensively, and Raj made a confused and incredulous noise in the back of his throat.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"I was waiting for the right time – this is the right time," Howard essentially blurted out, letting his excitement of possibly getting laid quickly get the better of him.

Raj scrambled mentally for a second, trying to think of a way to get Howard to think clearly about this, but before he could, Leonard strolled right in, startling both him and Howard.

"Hey, who's ready for Halo?"

"Oh, this is like a nightmare," Raj said with an exasperated roll of his eyes.

"Get lost," he added forcefully, trying to shoot Leonard back out of his apartment. At the same time mentally declaring Howard a lost cause, the shorter man too lost in his own libido to be deterred.

"He's right, the numbers are tricky enough as it is," Howard agreed, immediately proving Raj's silent point.

"...I don't understand?" Is Leonard's clever reply.

Curious about the raised voices, Doctor Plimpton stuck her head out of the bedroom to investigate, and her eyes seemed to light up at the sight of the three of them.

"Oh, good! Leonard's here!" She said Ina chipper tone, and Raj's jaw nearly dropped.

"Good?" He repeated weakly, once again surprised by her willingness to add more people into what he thought was a one-on-one date.

Leonard's eyebrows were furrowed together as he looked from Raj and Howard, then to Elizabeth, and back.

"Elizabeth? What's going on?"

"What's going on is you and Howard are my moving men, and Raj is my new landlord, and I don't have enough money to pay any of you!" She proposed – well, more like told the three of them – excitedly, closing the door again without waiting on an answer.

Leonard floundered for a brief moment, trying to quickly wrap his head around the current situation.

"Is she – suggesting what I think she's suggesting?"

"Yup," Howard practically breathed out, soundly slightly dazed and giddy with excitement. "Welcome to the penthouse forum."

In all honesty, Raj couldn't strictly say he was against Howard joining him and Elizabeth for a threesome. Howard was his best friend, and it wasn't like the two of them hadn't been in a threesome before. Granted, that was years ago, at a convention, and they and the woman they were with had all been very tipsy – bordering on drunk – at the time.

Raj did have a bit of wine with and after dinner tonight, not nearly as much as that time, but enough that he didn't think he completely minded a threesome with Elizabeth and Howard. However, he decidedly had not consumed enough liquid courage for a foursome with Elizabeth, Howard, and Leonard.

So, of course, while knowing time was short, and there was no way to express all of these thoughts, Raj blurted out the first question that came to mind.

"Okay, show of hands: who's up for this?"

Well, that was not at all what he meant to say – did he drink more wine than he remembered? Too late to take it back, though, because Howard's hand was already in the air. Raj turned his gaze to Leonard, who was instead looking at the ground thoughtfully.

"We'll all be naked – in front of each other," the experimental physicist pointed out glumly, and Howard's hand fell back to his side.

"I'm out."

Raj nodded slightly, trying to not look too pleased with their answers, and opened his mouth to tell them to leave quickly. Before he could, though, the bedroom door was opening again. Out walked Elizabeth, wearing nothing more than a short silk robe over a matching purple bra and slip-skirt.

"Everybody ready?" Raj almost missed the question, his brain frying slightly at the sight of her.

"Follow my lead," Raj whispered to his friends before turning back to Elizabeth and smiling.

"Almost. We're going to go out into the hallway and make a dramatic entrance," he 'explained'.

"Oh, good. It's so much better when everyone commits," she said as she smoothed down her ensemble before situating herself on the sofa.

Raj, meanwhile, started motioning Howard and Leonard out into the hallway.

"Run, run, run, run," he muttered to them. "Don't look back."

"I thought we had something special." Raj heard Leonard say quietly as he closed the door on them.

As soon as the door to the apartment clicked shut, Raj exhaled carefully, briefly resting his head on the frame to gather his wits.

Well, here goes nothing, he thought to himself as he slipped one hand into a pocket and turned around slowly.

"So you say you can't pay your rent?" He asked in a low voice, one eyebrow raised slightly as he addressed Elizabeth. She, in turn, bit her lip and shook her head innocently, an eager smile curling the corners of her mouth as Raj walked closer.

…

Later, after they've rested, Elizabeth questions why Howard and Leonard never came back. Raj just shrugs, and sprinkles a lie in with some truth. That they had probably chickened out (the lie), because neither of them had ever been in a foursome before (the truth). This answer seems to satisfy her, as she hums dismissively before grabbing him by the arm and pulling him close, ready to go again.