FIC; nothing stays together when you're making noise [part three]

[juniperlane]

She takes Raj out for dinner, like she promised. He still looks a little green around the edges. Unlike Sheldon, who showed no signs of the hangover he must have been struggling through all day, Raj had puked at least three times in the downstairs bathroom before lunch. And then again after Leonard had gone out to pick up some Chinese food. One whiff of the General Tso’s and Raj had been gone.

They find a diner that’s still serving breakfast, and Raj orders toast.

“So you’re going to be a cheap date tonight, then?”

“I might never forgive you for last night. I forgot how much he can drink when he’s in a mood.”

“You and me, both.” She resists the urge to mention his father. How sometimes she worries if they’re not there to pull him back from the edge, that he might topple over it, just like George Cooper, and find himself at the bottom of a bottle.

“You know I love him as much as you do-” Raj stops and blushes. She raises an eyebrow. “Not like that. Please. I’ve learned my lesson to only chase after the ones with manageable emotional damage.”

“He’s not broken or anything, Raj.”

“Not with you. I mean, you’ve heard some of the stories about him from before we found you, but. I feel like we always toned them down. To protect both of you. Or all of us. Maybe both.”

“He can’t have been that bad.”

“He once disappeared for two weeks. No warning, just gone. He missed three shows. We had no clue where he was. We called his mom in Texas, his sister, everyone we could think of. He showed back up like he had never left, and was surprised when we all freaked out at him.”

Raj’s toast arrives. She gets a refill on her coffee.

“Where did he go?”

“Germany. But he never actually told us. Leonard had to steal his passport to finally figure it out.”

She hmms in what she hopes appears to be an unconcerned fashion.

“No - it’s not that we think he went back for her. I don’t know. We don’t know why he did it, he just did and you know how he is. He doesn’t need to explain himself to anyone, unless he deems it necessary.”

“I don’t know if I can talk about Sheldon tonight, Raj. Or at least, that part of it all. He hasn’t exactly shared any of it with me either. I can’t fill in the blanks for you.”

“I’m just telling you this as a friend. Sometimes he needs time.”

“I know that, Raj. We all know that.”

“That’s not what I mean - I just. He had a shitty childhood. He struggles with things. He got sent abroad when he was eleven, because he could play circles around every one else. He never loved it though. He does with us, though. And he does with you. But he doesn’t always know how to tell you.”

She doesn’t really need to have an emotional breakdown in the middle of a diner in Portland. It’s not really an item on her daily to-do list.

“Topic change?” she requests, as politely as she can manage.

Raj bites into a piece of toast, and waves the rest of the piece around in a magnanimous circle, as if to say go ahead. As he chews, he looks at the little things of grape jelly on his plate with sadness.

“I’m never drinking again.”

“You say that every time.”

“Your boyfriend is an asshole.”

“Yep.”

“I mean, he’s not without total merit. His hands, for one thing-”

“I was hoping you’d have something to talk about that isn’t my love life. We could talk about your love life?”

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure what you’re referring to. Such a thing does not exist.”

“It would if you would only talk to some of these boys that I send over to you after shows. I have the radar, Raj. It never fails me. Or you, more accurately.”

“Yeah, and when am I going to have time to date someone? You and Sheldon have the band, the apartment, you’re all set. I’m never home, we play shows three or four nights a week, have practice another couple of nights, and I’m lucky if I can catch a few minutes of the Daily Show the one night we do have off.”

“Hey, Leonard’s still single. The two of you do have a lot of common interests.”

“Well, I’m done eating now.”

“Excellent. Karaoke?” she asks, brightly.

Raj throws a butter pad at her.

It’s the second day of Sheldon not talking to her. She takes to sitting out on the curb pretending to smoke her cigarettes, which is a pretty expensive way of killing time, especially considering how much they cost at the convenience store around the corner. Sometimes Bernadette sits next to her and they make up ridiculous stories for the people walking by or they talk about Bernadette’s shitty job and her manager that is obviously having an affair with one of the line cooks, or they just sit there in silence and wait for it to rain.

Late in the afternoon, she’s behind the wheel of the bus digging for a pack of gum she swears is in the driver’s side pocket when Leonard heads down the street, probably to go pick up another couple of six packs. She’s pretty sure he doesn’t see her, so she waits patiently for him to get back, sure enough with a rack of Miller Lite under his arm and his cell phone pressed to his ear. He is perfectly oblivious when she leans on the horn right as he passes the front of the bus.

She’s not exactly expecting the girlish shriek he emits, but it’s probably the best thing she’s going to hear all day, so she’ll take it.

Leonard doesn’t live it down for the rest of the night. They had even heard it inside, and she loses count of how many times Howard’s recreated the particular high-pitched tone Leonard had managed to reach until Bernadette finally shuts him down by punching him in the thigh dangerously close to his junk.

It would be just like a normal recording session if Sheldon would just talk to her.

Howard’s sitting at the board with Timmy, while Raj plays Switzerland on the couch between Penny and Sheldon. Bernadette’s using her legs as a backrest, which can’t be comfortable, but she’s peering intently at Penny’s open Word doc with potential song titles. Leonard’s in the guitar room, having an argument with himself over using one of Timmy’s Strats or his Gibson SG and muttering about humbuckers. It’s nearly midnight and it’s prime working time, now that they’ve all adapted to the insane hours kept by recording engineers.

They’re actually overdue for a Howard Wolowitz Witticism, so when he turns and says, very seriously and completely out of nowhere, “You know, I really hope this doesn’t turn into a Fleetwood Mac situation. I can’t handle the amount of drugs they did. I have a very sensitive nervous system,” she can’t even bother to tell him to shut up. (Bernadette does it for her. She’s about one hundred and ten percent sure at this time that Bernadette Rostenkowski is actually the greatest human being on the face of the planet.)

Colby does manage to find them a cover show, short notice for the weekend before they leave. It’s a nice Irish bar, just outside the city. Sheldon emails her his proposed set list. She somehow refrains from email back: Here is how I propose to break your face.

It’s close though.

Timmy suggests they start multi-tasking to save time. It’s a polite way to separate her and Sheldon, and while she sees through it, it’s probably for the best. Colby sets up a vocal booth at his house for her. It’s in a closet down in the basement, but he’s put up some fabric and a few lights and it doesn’t really feel like she’s about to get murdered. All the boys are at the studio still, but she’s dragged along Bernadette to keep her company and give her feedback without the bullshit.

Colby needs some time to get the computer and the board ready to go, so they wait upstairs in the sparsely furnished living room (seriously, only a guy would think big screen tv plus big leather couch equals living room) and cruise through the HD channels on the big screen until they find a rerun of a Nanny episode. Mr. Sheffield’s onscreen fake-kissing Fran when Bernadette says, without any real warning, “I slept with Howard last night.”

Well. She wasn’t expecting that, to say the least, but at least it’s not more unhappy venting about how Sheldon’s still being a complete dick.

“Wait, here?”

Bernadette nods slowly, knowing where the conversation is about to head.

“Howard has the top bunk, doesn’t he?”

“Yes.” There is a definite note of shame in Bernadette’s voice.

“You slept with Howard. On the top bunk.”

“Yes.”

“And by slept with, you mean, had sex with.”

“Yes.”

There’s a moment of silence while Penny processes.

“Was Raj sleeping on the bottom bunk.”

“...Maybe.”

“Bernadette.”

“Oh god, I know.” Her face is in her hands, but she’s laughing helplessly. “It squeaked a little bit, but you know Raj, he’s like a zombie. And I’m pretty sure we almost woke him up, but then he mumbled something about Sendhil Ramamurthy, and rolled over and we just sort of... kept going.”

“Oh my god.”

“You know, for a tiny man, he’s actually sort of-”

“Whatever you’re about to say, stop.”

Bernadette stops, thank god. “It wasn’t that bad,” she mumbles, but by the look on her face, it probably was.

“I can’t believe you sexed up Howard Wolowitz on a set of bunk beds. With someone else in the room. I’m sorry, do we go to boarding school, or something? Did you play seven minutes in heaven first?”

Bernadette reaches over and grabs a pillow off the sofa, which is promptly launched into her face. “Shut up, Penny. I know what you’ve done to Sheldon on the bus. It has been defiled. Violated. Profaned, even. Priests would not dare enter, knowing what acts have been committed at 55 miles per hour.”

“When you marry Howard, you can’t hyphenate your names. Your children can’t be the shortest humans in the country and have the longest names ever. It would just be cruel.”

“Remind me again why you gave up your career in stand-up comedy and went into music? It was obviously a terrible life decision.”

They smile at each other. Banter sessions with Bernadette are the easiest way for her to take her mind off Sheldon, right now.

“Wait, Sendhil Ramamurthy? Like, that guy from Heroes and that really bad spy show?”

“Yeah, him.”

“That would be like Raj sort of making out with himself.”

Bernadette nods, but her face suggests that she sort of wouldn’t mind watching it.

There’s another moment of silence.

“That show is really bad,” Penny says. It almost actively bothers her, since she loves the dad from The OC. And that chick from House that dated Wilson but then died in the bus crash, and man, she cried a lot at that episode.

“Seriously. Did they ever watch an episode of Alias, or what?”

“Yeah. The blind guy is pretty cute though.”

“I wouldn’t mind making out with him.”

“I wouldn’t mind it if Raj made out with him.”

“We should probably stop talking about boys Raj could make out with.”

“But it’s our favorite game.”

“True.” Bernadette sits back and leans her head against the sofa. “I cast all my moral objections aside for the great and noble pursuit of cute boys making out.”

“That’s more like it. But don’t think I forgot about you and Howard. I don’t think I ever will. It will be a terrible matter that weighs upon me until the day I die, and when I am buried, the headstone will say: Finally, she is free of the burden of knowing that Bernadette boned Howard on the top bunk, as if recording an album were band camp.”

“They’re going to have to engrave your headstone in nine point Arial, then.”

“Shut up, Rostenkowski.”

It’s not right, recording here, away from the boys but mostly Sheldon. She doesn’t say anything, but everyone knows the vibe is off. She cuts her tracks though. She’s a professional, and she’s paying out the ass for the privilege to be here.

She just imagines Tim Gunn is in the booth with her, pursing his lips and telling her to make it work. It actually helps, in a weird way. And Colby tries to help as much as he can, even though he knows she has to make the decisions on everything she does pretty much all by herself.

Leonard swings by around dinner time, with a bucket of fried chicken and biscuits, and a monstrous tub of mashed potatoes and gravy. The four of them pull up the mismatched chairs to the table in the kitchen, and talk about absolutely nothing for a solid hour. The closest they get to a serious topic of conversation is when Leonard becomes hilariously offended by Bernadette suggesting that Pokemon Snap was actually a decent game for Nintendo 64 back in the day.

After dinner, Colby plays back Singer Park for them, and Leonard makes a few comments. There’s still a small batch of lyrics that might need tweaking in the second verse, but lyric writing has never been Leonard’s strong point, so once he’s listened a few more times, he disappears back up the stairs to go hang out with Bernadette.

Back to work.

She wishes Sheldon were here, for about the seven millionth time. Even if she has no clue where she stands with him, she still misses him.

When she gets upstairs, Bernadette is playing some game with Leonard that he seems to be losing at miserably, based on the way he’s holding his head in his hands.

“I don’t know, the Bears?”

“The Bears are in Chicago, oh my god. The Super Bowl Shuffle?” When Leonard doesn’t reply, Bernadette gasps. “What rock were you under as a kid?”

Leonard mutters, “Obviously you never met my mother.”

Penny raises an eyebrow, and asks, “Am I interrupting something here?”

Bernadette claps her hand in glee. “No, Penny, you have to watch this. This is hysterical. OK, Leonard. Toronto.”

“Wait, which sport?”

“Any sport, Leonard. I don’t care. Penny, did you know that Leonard does not actually know where a single sports team is located except for those hailing from New York and Boston?”

“I grew up in Jersey. It’s hard to not know the Yankees and Red Sox.”

“Leonard, focus. Toronto.”

“Um, they have a team named for a bird, right?”

“That is actually accurate. I’ll even give you a hint that it’s their baseball team.”

“The Blackhawks? It has a color in the name, I remember that.”

“Every sports team you can name is from Chicago. Also, you are very bad at this.”

“I hadn’t noticed. I get to be done now, right?”

“Penny, care to buzzer in?”

“Toronto, right? Blue Jays, Maple Leafs, Raptors. Here, Leonard, I’ll get even on your behalf and challenge Bernadette to a question.”

“Try me. You know Glenn was from Toronto. I got this, girl.”

“Name the football team in Toronto.”

“Toronto doesn’t have a football team.”

“Not in the NFL, no. But they have a football team.”

Penny knows just by the look on Bernadette’s face that she’s got her stumped. “There you go, Leonard. Your honor is restored. And the answer is: the Toronto Argonauts, and fact: they are actually the oldest professional football team in the entirety of North America. Suck it.”

Leonard’s looking at her like she sprouted a new head. “How do you even know that?”

“Please. I grew up in Nebraska. Canada might not have real football, but it’s still football, and when there’s nothing else on at 3 AM, ESPN2 always comes through.”

They hit day four of the silent treatment before she finally starts to break. She starts trying to invade Sheldon’s space all afternoon, to see if she can push him into talking to her. But he’s Sheldon, and he’s got an iron will and an inability to admit he’s wrong about the worst things possible, so it fails miserably. The boys make up for it, always making sure one of them is with her at the house, or that Bernadette’s around and that there’s a new limitless supply of caffeinated beverages. They’ll backfire later tonight, when it’s just her and Sheldon not talking in a hotel room and she’s wired and unhappy until three in the morning, but right now she doesn’t really care.

At least she’s getting some quality time with Colby, who had been fairly elusive at the studio, preferring to let Timmy run the show. Colby just ignores the whole Sheldon situation, talking about the band’s future like it isn’t all up for grabs, and that there will still be a band, or that she’ll still be in it. It’s calming. He’s all business, but in a way that she knows he’s doing it for her, to keep the ground steady beneath her. He talks about all the decisions that she’ll have to make with Sheldon, finalizing song titles and track order, and finding someone professional to design the album artwork.

It’s their third time through the song she calls Hunting Ghosts. It’s the song Sheldon just wrote, and it’s not right they’re not recording it together. It’s meant for both of them. Colby catches her trying to fake her way through the key change. Her headphones go silent.

Colby opens the door and just looks at her. “I’m sorry, I know. I shouldn’t be having problems with it. Let’s do it again, I’ll hit it this time.”

“It’s not the song. Look, there’s really no other way to put this. It’s you.” He catches the way her shoulders fall, and puts his hand up. “No, it’s not as bad as you think I’m making it out to be. But you’ve got to get your shit together, Penny. This thing with Sheldon? You’re trying to pretend like it’s not a problem, but it is. And we all know it, too. The rest of your band doesn’t even know what happens if you and Sheldon don’t work this out. You guys are paying me. I’ll be here, I’ll do my job. But it’s not going to be any good if you’re not here. One hundred percent.”

Colby walks over and brings her into a hug. She’s about ten seconds away from bursting into tears. Colby lets her go, and she takes a breath to steady herself. It’s a little better. “Take the night off, Penny. If you need to stay here tonight, I can put you in my room with Bernadette and I’ll crash in the living room. Get wasted if you have to. But come back ready to work tomorrow, with your head in the game. Doesn’t matter what ends up happening with Sheldon, but you’re here to make a record.”

It’s only after he flicks off the board and she hears his footsteps creak up the stairs that she finally gives in and has herself a good cry.

After a bit, she heads back over to the studio. She doesn’t want to go back to the hotel, and if she’s lucky Bernadette will be there. But when she walks in, both her and Howard are MIA. She’s tempted to call, even if she knows she’s probably interrupting something, until she spots her guitar case propped up in the corner against the little coffee table. She asks Timmy if there’s a decent open mic night. Her hands start itching to play something, anything, that she didn’t write with Sheldon, that won’t make her feel this weird inevitable sadness like everything important might be coming to an end.

“Let’s see, it’s Wednesday. I think there’s one down at the Skylark, hold on, let me Google it and make sure I don’t send you halfway across town only to find out it’s belly dancing night, or something.”

“Thanks Timmy.”

Sheldon doesn’t say anything when she leaves, but she knows he’s watching her pick up her guitar and walk out the door. It almost feels like a goodbye.

She gets there half an hour before sign-ups, and orders a beer. She doesn’t really want to go first, anyway, so she leaves her guitar in its case on the floor beside her and takes her time before she finally wanders over to the list up by the stage.

When she signs up, the guy with the pen gives her a once-over but seems satisfied. “How many songs, sweetheart?”

“However many you’ll let me play.”

He glances around the bar. There’s a few people here with guitars, but not many. “Most nights it’s two or three. Tonight, you can have four unless I tell you different before you start. Sound good?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“OK, try to keep the cussing and the ironic covers to a minimum. Save ‘em for YouTube. Other than that, have fun and if you suddenly catch a case of stage fright, please direct any and all vomiting to the nearest toilet and not on any of my equipment, please and thank you.”

She wrinkles her nose. Gross. On second thought, she probably should have brought her own microphone. It’s weird using other people’s stuff, and using other people’s microphones is worst of all.

She gets called up a little after nine, and the two guys that have gone before her were fine, although she can tell just by the way that they play that this is really the only time they perform. The slight hesitation over the strings, the nerves she can hear in their voices. It’s not second nature, but something they have to think about every second they’re up on that stage.

She’s not really even sure what she’s going to play once she’s up there, but she’d been working on a cover of Go Your Own Way for a few months that had been giving her trouble and it seems like the perfect place to see if her muscle memory will kick in. She’s got this country-twang guitar thing at the end, and she only hits it two out of three times, but it’s not like anyone around here is really going to judge her. It’s actually sort of the worst song to play right at the moment, but she puts all her personal bullshit aside and just focuses on hitting the notes and settles for sounding sad while she sings, rather than completely on the edge of being broken. She tones down the guitar solo at the end a bit, just to make sure she doesn’t fuck it up completely, but she can tell it’s working for the small crowd watching her. She gets a healthy round of applause when she closes out the last “you can go your own way.”

She picks up the beer at her feet, and finishes it off. There’s a couple of cheers, and someone shouts up to the stage to see if she wants a shot. “Oh shit no,” she says, laughing into the mic. “Bad enough that I’m up here as it is.” She checks the tuning of her guitar, trying to come up with another song to play. “Any requests?” she asks. “No promises, but if I know it, I’ll play it.”

Before there’s an answer, she adds, “And if any of y’all fuckers say Freebird, I’m not afraid to come down there and kick your asses.” There’s a round of laughter and a good-natured frown from the sign-up guy over her mouth, and she’s officially got them all on her side now. It’s oddly freeing to be up on a stage on her own, with no one behind her anchoring her to a beat. She should really do this more often.

“Nothing, guys? Really? I’m disappointed.”

There’s a knot of girls near the bar, and they’ve all got to be in college still. They look like babies. One of them actually raises her hand, like this is class. It’s precious.

Penny nods in her direction, because if she opens her mouth she might start laughing and not be able to stop.

“Do you know Rolling in the Deep?”

“Yeah, sure.” She has to find her capo though, to play that one. She reaches back to grab her case so she can dig around for it. “This is turning into sad break-up central in here. Or maybe Glee has a bigger influence on all of us than we realized. Which is a horrifying thought, isn’t it?”

The crowd laughs. Ah, there’s the capo.

“And now all of you know I watch Glee.” She sticks it on the third fret, make sure the strings still ring. “But that’s ok, because you all laughed, and now I know that you watch Glee. So we’re even.”

She strums a couple of Am chords, before she thinks of something. She squints back at the girls at the bar. “What’s your name, out there?”

“Vanessa. But it’s for my friend here, Gwen.”

“All right, to Gwen then. And to me. And to all the rest of you, if you’re struggling with the ones you love.” She raises her empty bottle and watches as glasses are raised back at her.

There’s really no easy way to cover this song except to sing it straight and know that she can never out-sing Adele, so that’s exactly what she does. It seems like no matter how many times people hear this song, they can never get enough of it. And this one would actually be a good one to have the band with her, Sheldon’s keys and the song seems to lack slightly without that thumping drum beat. She starts stomping her foot in time, and a few people start clapping or hitting their tables, and she smiles. Such an easy sway, one of the easiest crowds she’s ever had. And if nothing else, the sheer number of times she’s sung this in the shower means she’s not exactly afraid of the moment when she hits the chorus and really has to start belting it out.

She looks up at the end of the song, and Sheldon’s at the front table, with a glass of something, scotch probably, and he pushes a sweating beer bottle across the table for her to reach over and grab. She's not even sure how he managed to get in here without her noticing, but he tends to be oddly good at things like that (like when he always magically appears at the merch table when she's getting hit on by creepy drunk guys that don't bother to learn her name but want to sleep with a lead singer). He meets her eyes steadily, and she wonders if he's been here the whole time. Timmy's pissed at him, but he's still a good enough guy to try and help them out, especially if it means getting Sheldon off his back right before they start recording his parts.

"You want to come up here?" She asks, away from the microphone while she leans down to grab the bottle.

"If you want me up there. It's your decision."

And as angry and worried she's been the past few days, and as much as his silent treatment is still a fresh sting, it would be impossible not to let him try and fix this, and for her not to help.

"Come on, come up here."

When he climbs up on stage, she tosses a glance to the guy running the open mic, as if to say, it's OK, he is not a crazy person, do not panic.

She pulls another stool out for him to sit on, and she moves the mic stand over to him. He doesn't say anything, but she can tell he was expecting it on some level, even if he's still not quite happy about it.

"Your choice, Sheldon."

"Fine. Your song, please."

He still calls it her song, even though it's really his, the one he built in tiny pieces from Detroit on after they kissed. The one with her melody. Fuck him and and his hidden sentimental streak.

"Asshole," she mutters, and she catches him trying to hide his smile while she strums the first chords, but he looks at her and mouths "I know," back at her.

She sings the harmonies even though she doesn't have a mic anymore, and by the end of the song, she's pretty sure everything might be fine after all.

“We get another song, Sheldon. You want it?”

She sees him place his fingers against his knee in a chord formation. He wants his keyboard. “Because?” he asks.

She nods, they can do the song with just the acoustic, even though it would sound best with some form of piano. But they can make it work.

“You gotta intro it, Sheldon. You have the mic.”

“This is a song by Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen.” She nods at him again, trying to encourage him to actually try his hand at stage banter. “It has not been in Glee.” She laughs outright at that, and so does the crowd. “It’s desperate and urgent, but ultimately it suggests the unnamed protagonists of the song will succeed in staying together through sheer force of will. I find it’s a lesson I’ve just learned the hard way”

“All right, Professor, let’s just play the damn song.” But even as she says it to him across the stage, she can’t actually wipe the smile off her face.

It’s not nearly as frantic a version as Springsteen used to play back in the day, but they do it justice. Sheldon finally gets the idea to just bring the mic over to her, so she takes a weird pleasure at shouting the lyrics directly at his face while he’s still actually making the effort to sing them.

They stay for the rest of the open mic. Penny’s secretly glad they got the loudest applause of the night, and when they get up to leave, the guy in charge actually stops by their table and tells them they’re welcome back any time. It’s not a bad evening’s work.

He kisses her out back, near the loading dock. This time it seems less like a flashback to how they started, but more like the promise of something new. That they can be better than this, whether or not the band makes it, or if the album works out, that he's promising her that it's back to being them against the world again.

“What’s the song about, Sheldon?” She smiles. He nods his head. He remembers. But this time the conversation is different.

“It’s about growing up. And that not all compromises have to be considered failures. That sometimes, compromising on one thing wins you something more important.”

“That letting go of one thing lets you hold on to something else?” He’s in one of his plaid shirts, tucked into jeans, a superhero peeking up between his collar. She fiddles with the top button, and places a kiss against his jaw.

“Something like that. I wrote it for someone I’m in love with.”

“You should tell me her name so I can go kick her ass.”

“Having received many blows from disturbing her in the early hours of the morning, may I suggest you go to fight her after eleven in the morning, at the earliest?”

“She sounds tough.”

“She’s stronger than I am.”

“Well, I believe that.”

They only leave the alley when someone brings out the trash and finds them, with Penny’s hands just about to undo Sheldon’s fly, so. That’s somehow not the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to her, but it’s pretty close. Plus they have a hotel room. They should really get on that.

They walk back to the hotel. Sheldon carries her guitar. The Portland night is cool and foggy and perfect.

“Who told you to come after me?”

“Bernadette.”

“Shit. I’m not going to make her do any of the bitch work for months to pay her back for this.”

Sheldon tugs her a little closer, and manages to press a kiss to the top of her head without breaking stride.

They have to go back to the studio three weeks after they wrap for a few final touches after they get the mixes back from Timmy. It's all minor stuff that needs fixing, and mostly on Penny's end. But Sheldon calmly requests that he'd like to try a new part on The Time Before that he'd only come up with a few nights ago, and she checks with Timmy first that it will be ok. He's reluctant since he’s got another band coming in to start as soon as they leave, but she promises him this time that there will be no surprises.

They drive up in her car this time, instead of the bus. Sheldon's going to use the upright that resides at the studio, rather than bringing his keyboards, and she doesn't really need to bring anything, though she sticks her Gibson in the back seat out of habit, just in case. They stop about halfway in Red Bluff and crash at a Best Western, too tired to do anything but sleep with the air conditioning cranked as low as it will go and the blinds all the way up to wake them up first thing in the morning. The continental breakfast leaves everything to be desired, but the coffee is drinkable, and as far as Penny's concerned, that's all that counts.

They don't really talk on the second day of the drive, although Sheldon tries to play some of his weird car games that revolve around naming classical composers that he always kicks her ass at, and eventually just plays by himself. She amuses herself with playing punch buggy and doing her best to give him a bruise right below the shoulder.

She’s flicking through static and talk radio, hoping to find something decent enough to leave on and keep her awake. She forgot to charge her iPod at the hotel, and there’s a CD in her stereo that’s been stuck in there for at least four months now. She finally finds a college radio station on the lower end of the dial that’s playing the Pixies and prays it stays in range for more than a couple of songs.

Portland’s still about four and a half hours away, and they’re due to stop for lunch soon. Her back is definitely starting to feel the road trip. Sheldon’s definitely got it worse though, being as tall as he is and crammed into the front seat of her Volkswagen.

Sgt. Pepper’s comes on the radio next, and Penny turns it up. When Sheldon looks over at her, she smiles and says, “It was my first Beatles song. My sister was just figuring out music and she found it in my parents’ albums. I don’t think they had ever listened to it. One of their friends had given it to them as a present, way before any of us were born.”

She taps out the drum beat on the steering wheel, not expecting any comment from Sheldon.

“My mother, as you know, is deeply religious.” Penny doesn’t even look at him, because Sheldon, he never willingly shares like this. She has to drag it out of him, or he’s drunk, or the boys tell her. “John Lennon never won any favors with my mother, and there was an unofficial rule in the house that pop music was only for those with questionable morals. Of course, that meant that my sister had to listen to it.”

“Sounds like Missy,” she says, trying to play it cool.

“Yes. And true to form, she was caught by my mother. So not only was Missy punished, the three of us had endure a solid month of Amy Grant albums on repeat. I think that was the best I have ever gotten along with my brother. Saved by Love makes for strange alliances, I suppose.”

“I guess I’m going to be glad I don’t even know what that is.”

“Quite glad, I should think. Anyway, a few months passed, and by then Missy had learned to listen to her records over at her friends’ houses. I did not have that luxury.”

This is why Sheldon never tells his stories, Penny thinks. They all end up being super depressing.

“My father found me one night, curled up against one of the speakers as I tried to listen to the radio with the volume barely on. He was freshly home from the bars, well past drunk, as he often was. I expected he would hit me, or simply turn me over to my mother.”

By now, she thinks it’s safe enough to go ahead and ask, “What did he do?”

“He grabbed my shoulder. By this point, I was certain that my punishment would be far, far worse than Missy’s had been. But instead of marching me upstairs to face my mother’s wrath, he took me outside and put me in the driver’s seat of his truck.”

“Hold old were you?”

“Ten. It was before I left home. All I had ever listened to were the songs I played with my tutors and whatever my mother allowed. My father put the keys in the ignition, and told me to drive. I was startled, to say the least. There wasn’t much around us, but I couldn’t even see us managing to make it out of our driveway safely. Well, you know my feelings about motor vehicles. They were worse back then.”

Sheldon starts to laugh, and that’s when she can finally relax. This memory’s a good one after all. “He tells me, not too far, just around the bend. So I did. He worked the pedals, I drove. And when we turned out of the driveway, he had me immediately pull over.”

“He let you listen to his radio, didn’t he?”

Sheldon nods. “We went back before sunrise. My mother never found out. She just thought my father hadn’t come home that night until late, and she didn’t speak to him for at least a week.” He shakes his head a little, breaking himself out of his nostalgia. “I worked it out later that was the moment I knew I would end up a musician.”

“It just took you a little while to figure out what kind, huh?”

“Yes,” he says, and seems inclined to leave it at that. She’s glad enough she got what she did, to know that he has at least a few happy memories tucked away inside him of Texas and his family.

She spots a sign for a Jack in the Box, the exit another mile up the road. They’d passed the last In-N-Out right after leaving the motel, and this is a sad alternative, but at least it’s edible.

“Lunch?”

“Lunch.”

Timmy shakes Sheldon's hand when they pull up in front of the studio, and Penny releases a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. Timmy smiles at her, and thank god, he's such a good guy. Lesser men than him had definitely not managed to coexist with Sheldon.

"Let's do this shit, boys," she says. "And let's do it right this time."

Sheldon's sitting next to Timmy at the board, but he doesn't have his headphones on so she's not super worried about how intensely he seems to be talking. Timmy's nodding too, so another good sign, enough that she goes back to focusing on bobbing her tea bag up and down in her mug.

"I've made a request," Sheldon says.

"I've already told you, Sheldon, the church bells stay on The Union Pacific. I like them. Leonard likes them. Raj likes them. 3-2, we win."

"It's not about the bells. Despite popular opinion, I can admit defeat."

"Well, it didn't help that Howard was the only one on your side."

He grimaces. "No, it did not. But it's not about the bells."

She takes a careful sip of tea. Whoever thinks this is better than coffee is crazy, but on singing days, it's the only thing she lets herself drink.

"I've asked Timmy to let us rerecord the main vocals on Chasing Galaxies."

"Wait, what? I just had to redo some of the back-up tracks, not the whole thing."

"Yes, but when we originally recorded it, I was here and you were at the booth at the house. It lacks the personal feel of the version we both know the song could have."

He has a point, and Timmy's slipped past them to set up another mic in the vocal booth, so obviously he's down for whatever. They've got the rest of the afternoon anyway, but Colby's not here and he'd probably want to sign off on something like that.

Sheldon looks at her. "It can't hurt to try it, can it?" It can’t. It’s the second song he wrote for her, and she knows it means a lot to both of them. “Timothy and I think it might be the single we send out to the record labels.”

Timothy, she thinks, half exasperated, half completely unsurprised. “You and Timmy talked about that?”

“Yes. He had some good ideas that I think we should take under advisement. But he agrees with me that rerecording the vocals on this song is worth it.”

Timmy pokes his head out of the booth. “Plus you know you fucked up that key change hardcore, right?”

Timmy’s lucky she can laugh about it now, because three weeks ago she would have gone Nebraska on his ass.

She takes a good long look at Sheldon. He’s waiting to see what she says, to see if she jumps back into this with him all over again. To trust him like she did before

“You want to sing it with me?”

Sheldon looks over at Timmy, who nods. “It’s good whenever you are.”

Sheldon looks back at her. He’s got the faintest hint of a smile. “We’re good.”

“OK,” she says, and takes Sheldon’s hand. “Let’s try it.”

masterpost | part one | part two | part three