Hello, if you've seen my page and read my recent stories you'll know Young Sheldon's probably my favorite show of all time. Despite knowing that it was a prequel and knowing what Sheldon's relationship status in advance, I still grew to like him and Paige far better, they just had better chemistry and honestly they treated each other far better then his relationship with Amy. I'm guessing you guys did too since I've seen a lot of people commenting about them...oh and you clicked on this story.
This is gonna be a long one, my longest yet, but I feel like everything I have is pretty decent and I'm proud of what I have. Today I posted the first 5 chapters(they officially get together in chapter 5), these first five are basically a somewhat modified version of Sheldon and Paige's major episodes together from the show, I figured I'd better get those out of the way early so we can get to where things start diverging from what happens in the show. I still wrote them because they build up their friendship before becoming a couple, contains stuff that will be important later, and contains a lot of lines that will come back around. Though if you don't really care about all that and just want to see them as a couple you can just skip to chapter 5 and go on from there.
I've kept you long enough. Please enjoy the show!
Chapter 1: Started as Friends
It was such a beautiful day; the sun was concealed by clouds, the birds were nowhere to be seen, and a young 10-year-old genius had just arrived at his audited physics class with Dr. Sturgis.
He entered the room with Meemaw as she dropped him off "Ok, I'll see you later"
"Are you sure you don't want to stay with me?" Sheldon offered
"I don't think so, I don't really understand this stuff"
"That's how I felt when we watched Dirty Dancing and I stayed"
"When Patrick Swayze takes his shirt off in here I'll be back, have a good one," she said before leaving.
Sheldon shrugged that off and went to his spot in the…. He went over to it but there was a girl his age sitting in it already "Hello" he said not knowing what else to say.
"Hi," she greeted back.
"Who are you?"
"I'm Paige," she said smiling "I like your bowtie"
"Thank you," he said, happy that someone finally appreciated his sophisticated attire, but it still didn't explain everything "you seem awfully young Paige, are you with an adult taking this course?"
"No, Dr. Sturgis heard about my research on quantum chromodynamics on high temperatures and invited me to audit his course" Paige explained, that was pretty impressive that she had actual research in those fields.
"Really?" Sheldon said kinda jealous
"Oh yeah, he's been super nice" Paige responded.
"Alright but just to let you know, he's my mentor, he's my Meemaw's boyfriend, and he had spaghetti and hot dogs at my house last night," Sheldon said to maintain his status.
"...The spaghetti goes on the hot dogs?"
"No, you realize this is a very advanced class. We'll be deriving nuclear physics from the quark model," Sheldon said, showing off how much he knew.
"Do you know if he'll be doing a full octet calculation with matrix manipulations?" Paige asked
"I do not"
"Do you know how to differentiate under the integral sign?"
"No," Sheldon said, getting progressively more embarrassed.
"Well, do you know anything," she said, chuckling at him.
"I know you're in my spot," Sheldon said, really wanting this to end.
So Sheldon had to be subjected to her unusual brand of positivity for the rest of the lecture. Normally he was the main one asking questions and providing the teachers with insightful knowledge, but now she was there doing both of those things as well. Every time he wanted to share his intellect they would see which one of them could raise their hands faster and get called on first, therefore he got noticed only half as much.
Well, his audited lectures may be different from now on but at least now he could go home where he can still stand out for his intellect.
He entered the living room with his mom and dad sitting on the sofa waiting for them, seeming very happy.
His mom put down the phone "Hey Shelly, guess who's coming over tomorrow, you're new friend Paige" she said immediately diminishing his excitement.
Ten Minutes of badgering later
"Oh come on Shelly, maybe you'll end up being friends" Mom asserted as Sheldon played with his toy trains.
"I don't like her, I'm not going to like her, and Tam is my friend I don't need another one" Sheldon rebounded.
"He's gotta point," Missy said in a chair brushing her doll's hair "She doesn't know him that well yet, she won't like him"
"You are not helping!" Mary asserted. She tried to calm down "You can have more than one friend, I bet Tam has other friends"
"No, if he did I doubt he would be friends with me" Sheldon explained.
Mary rolled her eyes at him "Sheldon…" Wow she was gonna need to pray for forgiveness after this "The truth is I don't have a lot of friends and I was hoping I would be able to bond with Paige's mother" she said hoping to strike sympathy "But if you don't want to do it then that is perfectly fine" she said striking a nerve.
"It's not like you have anything to lose" Missy pointed out "Again it's not like she'll stick around you for long"
"YOU.. get out of here!" Mary said, kicking Missy out of the garage. She calmed down as best she could. "So what do you say?"
"Sheldon, Paige and her family are here" Mary called for him.
Sheldon got out of bed hoping his training would be enough. He had spent the entire previous night studying 's techniques on how to avoid giving into emotion, didn't react to Georgie's salami burps in order to build his endurance to pain, and figured out how to differentiate under the integral sign.
Sheldon came out of his room prepared for anything. "Hi Sheldon," she said, trapping him in a hug; this was gonna be a long day.
While Mom and Dad spent time with her parents Sheldon fulfilled his responsibility and kept Paige occupied "alright since we'll be spending a few hours together I've compiled a list of activities to keep us occupied; we'll start with a tour of my room, then board games, and if time permits you can look at and not touch my trains"
"Huh, My Little Pony, I love My Little Pony" Paige ecstatically said picking up the stuffed Pony.
"That's my sister's and she says I'm not allowed to touch her things"
"She's not my sister," Paige joked before rapidly touching all of Missy's stuff and laughing about it. Sheldon sighed at this and Paige took notice "I share a room with my sister too, it's really fun…well for me at least"
"Anyways this is my desk, this is my computer, this is my printer, this is the paper that goes into the printer, and this…this is my autographed poster of Professor Proton, do you watch his show?"
Paige frowned a little "Not really, I think he's boring" she said shocking Sheldon "And he dumbs everything down" she added.
Sheldon took a deep breath "And as we near the end of the tour we see this lamp, and that concludes the tour, feel free to visit any of the past exhibits or play with Missy's stuff some more" Sheldon added before going to get a Yoo-Hoo as Paige immediately started rearranging Missy's toys.
Sheldon was in the hall close to the kitchen and could somewhat hear his mom making pigs in a blanket.
"I don't like this" he could hear his dad "Their kid is perfect"
"So is ours"
"So we're lying to each other" Sheldon could hear his dad, suddenly he wasn't thirsty anymore.
Sheldon set up his new deviant chess game and played with Paige for a while
"You actually believe in the multiverse theory?" Paige questioned
"Very much so, it's the most eloquent interpretation of quantum mechanics" Sheldon specified
"So you really believe there are an infinite number of universes?"
"Stephen Hawking believes it and I trust him" Sheldon insisted, determined to beat Paige at chess.
"Well if there is an infinite number of universes, I think that theory is dumb in all of them," she said, making a joke to Sheldon's dismay. "This is fun," Paige said out of nowhere. Fun? He thought they were competing and forced to interact, this was fun for her? "I don't get to have discussions like this with kids at my school, do you?" she asked
"No…..not even with my friend Tam"
"Well that's one more friend than I have at school" Paige confessed.
"...lucky" Sheldon said, causing Paige to laugh for some reason.
"Do you ever wish you were just like everyone else?"
"Not at all" Sheldon confirmed
"Me too, I love being smarter than everyone else," Paige said with a smirk.
"Me too," Sheldon said. Huh, perhaps Paige wasn't as bad as he thought, maybe Mom was right and he just needed to get to know her better-
"Checkmate! You lose!" Paige said delivering her final blow
Control yourself Sheldon, you can do this, control yourself you can do this!
"I guess that makes me the smartest" Paige said
CONTROL YOURSELF, YOU WILL NOT FAIL! YOU WILL NOT FAIL YOUR MOTHER! YOU WILL NOT FAIL SPOCK! YOU CAN GET THROUGH THIS! IF YOU STAY THE COURSE, YOU WOULD HAVE FAILED THE MISSION! JUST HOLD ONNNN!
"Good game," Sheldon said hesitantly holding out his mittened hand to congratulate Paige, she happily accepted.
BOOM
"Woah!"
"Holy Crap"
A loud sound came from outside along with Missy and Georgie's voices, after checking to make sure he didn't explode Sheldon and Paige went to investigate
2 Months Later
From a young age, Sheldon was the proud member of several elite organizations: The radio shack battery club (entitling the bearer to the bargain of one free battery a year, really should fire the marketing exec who approved that idea), Starfleet International (entitling the bearer to say stuff like "I'm a member of Starfleet international"), and best of all The Natural Science Museum of Texas (which alerted him to all the great lectures touching on all the archeological and paleontology advances for the year).
George Sr. walked Sheldon to his seat at the museum lecture "Alright don't wander off, I'll pick you up right after the lecture is over"
"Bye," Sheldon said reading his magazine.
"You gonna be ok by yourself?"
"I actually prefer it" Sheldon explained.
"Yep, I'm leaving"
"You keep saying that but then you don't do it? I'm confused" Sheldon said
"Bye," his dad said before leaving.
"Sheldon!" a voice called out to him, he turned to see Paige walking up to him.
"Paige?"
"I'm so happy to see you, are you happy to see me?"
"Not immediately" he responded, maybe wait and see after a few minutes.
"It's ok, I'm happy enough for the both of us"
"All right welcome everybody," the speaker said walking up to begin the lecture "I know we're all excited to hear about radioactive decay" she quipped before noticing Sheldon and Paige "Well hello, I don't usually have children at my lectures"
"I enjoyed your paper on accelerator mass spectrometry and wanted to find out more" Paige eagerly told her.
"Is that so, and you?" she said, referring to Sheldon.
Sheldon was a bit caught off guard by this "Ugh..I read this magazine"
"Oh no way, that's how I found out," she said, making a joke but only getting around two people in the back to laugh "...anyway do you want to kick this off and tell us what carbon-dating is?"
"The 5730-year half-life of carbon 14 is used as a geochronometer" Paige vividly explained.
The speaker seemed shocked and a little bit defeated after that "And you?" she said hoping Sheldon would make herself look a little smarter.
"...uh carbon dating is how we found out how old my Memaw was," he said unexpectedly getting a big laugh from the entire crowd.
The speaker's jaw was dropped after he got a laugh "ok let's..get this over with" she said starting the lecture
After about fifteen minutes of paleontology 101 Sheldon was getting really bored as she really just started resaying all the information she said at the beginning and hoped no one would notice.
"This is pretty basic stuff" Paige pointed out
"Yes"
"I'm bored"
"So am I"
"Let's get out of here" Paige said grabbing his arm
"I can't I told my dad I would stay" Sheldon insisted
"Ok" Paige said letting go "be a baby" she playfully insulted "see ya" she ducked and escaped the lecture
Sheldon shook that off, she was such a baby, because people who call other people babies are babies themselves, they are just insecure because they are babies. "This proves nothing" he said following her
After walking around a little bit and watching her pretend to fall into different dinosaur exhibits. They went to look at some solar system exhibit Paige wanted to-
"Hey look" she said noticing a clear curtain with a sign that said 'No Entry'
"We're not allowed to go in there"
"Alright, Baby!" Paige insulted before going in
"That's not gonna work every time….I'm not going in" Sheldon asserted
"Ok, bye Sheldon" Paige said before he heard some footsteps
"Wait up" he entered to see Paige stomping in place and laughing at his dismay
They both went deeper into the exhibit and found a place to sit, surrounded by wax cavemen.
"This is oddly reminiscent of dinner with my family" he said inadvertently causing her to laugh
"You're funny"
"I know I should really fix that"
"Do you think stone age parents stayed together?"
"They had to, there were no Lawyers," he said, getting her to laugh again, cursing his consistent natural humor "why do you ask?"
"I think my parents are getting divorced" Paige admitted, avoiding eye contact
"Oh…what makes you think that?"
"They fight all the time, a couple nights ago they had a really bad one about whether my mom could take me to a architectural construction lecture" Paige vented
"I'm sorry, that's too bad" Sheldon was a bit lost "however my parents had a fight like that when I got a computer and I managed to fix that with said computer, I'm basically the glue that holds my family together"
"Nice"
"You said you didn't like the multiverse theory, maybe if you weren't smart they would have divorced but since you are you kept them together" he said making her feel better and one upping her in quantum theory with one blow
"Hm, hope for the best I guess" Paige said smiling
There was knocking on the glass "What are you kids doing in there!" the security guard growled
"Don't move" Paige instructed as they were completely still
The guard raised the glass
"Ok Move!" she said right before they were caught
They parted ways when their dads picked them up, they might not be in too much trouble but it would probably be a while before he could go to another lecture, at least he wasn't a baby.
Thanks for giving my story a chance, as I said the next 4 chapters are released as well up until they officially get together. I've been working on this story since August of last year so I could give you guys a large portion of it over the coming weeks while I keep writing and my readers inevitably catch up to me. So please come back for the coming chapters.
Thank you so much for reading and Please Review!