TBBT - Queer_fest fic
Title: The Attraction Curiosity
Author: ohsoboring
Fandom: The Big Bang Theory
Pairing/characters: Raj/Howard, Penny, Leonard, Sheldon; mentions of Penny/Raj, Penny/Leonard, Leonard/Priya, Howard/Bernadette
Rating: PG for substance abuse?
Disclaimer: Owner of nothing, fic unbeta'd
Prompt: We're not gay, we just love each other... no, wait, maybe we are gay (any fandom) from queer_fest
Summary: Sometime after the season finale Raj gets drunk, Howard gets confused, Sheldon does not get Red Vines, and Penny explains it all.
Warnings: Spoilers for everything! No sex!
Author's Notes: I actually wrote a fic that wasn't entirely without sex! Yay! And my first BBT fic even though I adore the show and need the next season to happen immediately. Original post is here. I still can't believe actual strangers are leaving comments! Sorry, sorry... just excited. This whole "posting stuff publicly" is still shiny and new. But I'm still sticking copies away in this journal just in case the community vanishes.
“So what’ll it be?” Penny asked her first-and possibly only-customer of the evening. The Cheesecake Factory’s bar wasn’t exactly one of the busiest watering holes in Pasadena, particularly on a Thursday night. In short, it was a lonely job. Penny didn’t like having a job that reflected her social life, and the pay wasn’t even all that great.
Upon receiving the anticipated lack of a reply, Penny put down the glass she was polishing (it was already as clean as it was going to get, but there was something about the action that made her feel more like a legitimate bartender and less like a waitress who happened to man the bar) and approached Rajesh. “Still not talking to me, huh?” she asked with a slightly bemused smirk. “It this is how you treat all the girls you have one-night stands with, it’s no wonder you’re still single.”
Raj glared at Penny. The expression’s intended fearsomeness was largely canceled out by his garish sweater vest and the fact that he looked about as miserable as Penny’s job made her feel.
“I know, I’m one to talk.” The waitress poured herself a pity shot of straight tequila and choked it down before starting on Raj’s (considerably tamer) drink of choice. “Look, we agreed that it never happened, right? It was just a mistake between two third wheels who both had a little too much to drink.”
Raj raised an eyebrow and wiggled four fingers at her.
She sighed. “Two fourth wheels, whatever. You know what I mean and it sounds pathetic either way.”
The astrophysicist nodded in agreement.
“There. One Grasshopper for you,” Penny sat the drink down and retrieved another for herself, “and two shots of tequila closer to kidney failure for me.”
They threw back their respective drinks. Penny made a face as the second shot burned its way down her throat and vowed to cut herself off for the night. She had already tried the loneliness-drunkenness-Raj cocktail and had no intention of doing it again. Possibly. For the moment, at least, Penny’s inner voice of reason was uninebriated, in control, and prepared to avoid bad decisions; she’d have to check back with it later.
Now that the wheels of conversation were greased with booze, Penny asked Raj a question that she fully expected an answer to. “Where’re the other guys?”
Raj sighed rather melodramatically and, selective mutism momentarily cured by the wonders of liquor, replied, “Enjoying Anything Can Happen Thursday with Bernadette, Priya, and Amy in a dark movie theater.” He pushed his empty cocktail glass towards Penny in a less-than-subtle request for a refill. “Sheldon and Amy will be the only ones watching the movie without someone’s tongue down their throats.”
The mental image that conjured up was appalling. Penny didn’t want to think about Howard in any context that involved tongues and imagining Leonard with Indian Barbie-no, these were not thoughts she was going to pursue. “Decided not to go along for the show, huh? Can’t say I blame you.”
Bad decisions be damned. Penny sneaked another drink and handed Raj a second Grasshopper.
“No, I wanted to go,” he admitted forlornly. “It’s X-Men: First Class, Penny. I need to go.”
Penny gave Raj a pitying look. “Aw, sweetie. Did they leave without you again?”
He nodded and took a long drink in reply.
“Forget about them,” she said with pep that she definitely wasn’t feeling. “We can hang out. As friends.”
“Isn’t it a bit late to be friends after-“
“No, please. No. Don’t say it,” Penny interrupted. “It didn’t happen. My bad for bringing it up.”
Raj frowned into his second drink. After some hesitation, he said, “I wouldn’t mind saying it happened.” He gave Penny a look that was one part hopeful and two parts desperate. “I wouldn’t mind if it happened again, either.”
“Not happening,” she assured him, still more than sober enough to muster something like conviction. “No offense, Raj, but it shouldn’t have happened at all. I didn’t need things to get even more awkward with Leonard.”
He aimed a sullen glare at the countertop. “Why is it always about Leonard? What about things being awkward with me?”
“Because things’ll always be awkward with you, sweetie. You can’t even talk to me when you’re not drunk off your ass.”
“I am not drunk off of my ass or any other body parts,” he protested with vehemence that nearly sent him toppling off of his barstool, “and I’ll have you know that I’m quite a catch! I’m a very good listener and a passionate but tender lover!”
“A, that last part is completely not true and b, then why aren’t you at the movie and doing the nasty with your girlfriend if you’re such a catch?”
Much to Penny’s dismay, her barb coincided with the onset of Raj’s state of drunken melancholy. He hid his head in his hands and proceeded to get all weepy.
Penny nobly resisted the urge to bang her head against the countertop until she was senseless and tried to console her… whatever Raj was with a pat on the shoulder. “Raj, I didn’t mean it, okay? You’re just fine in bed, I promise.”
“That’s not the point,” he sniffled into his hands. “Why aren’t I at the movie, Penny? Why do Howard and Bernadette get to play tonsil hockey and I don’t?”
Penny didn’t think that Raj needed to be reminded that most of his troubles could be blamed on his pathological fear of talking to women while sober (although part of her delighted in this information because it meant that there was at least one person in the world with a more depressing love life than hers). She zeroed in on his mention of Bernadette and Howard instead. Thinking about them was creepy, but definitely a step above wondering what Leonard and Priya were currently up to. “You’re still crushing on Bernadette, aren’t you, sweetie?”
Raj’s pity-party was abandoned in favor of wide-eyed horror.
“Oh, come on,” Penny continued, mixing a third drink for Raj and trying to convince herself that she had enough self-control to refrain from helping herself to another. She was not going to sleep with Raj again because they were both lonely and drunk. Absolutely not. “It’s not like no one noticed how upset you were after Howard proposed to her.”
Judging by Raj’s stunned silence, Penny figured she was onto something. She put a companionable (and entirely platonic) hand on his. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly nice girl out there for you who doesn’t mind carrying a conversation by herself. Seriously, if Howard can get a great girl like Bernadette in spite of all of his creepiness, a good guy like you has to find someone eventually.”
Raj seemed torn between making an argument and simply sinking into a hopeless, drunken stupor. His dilemma was nullified by the sound of familiar voices.
“-the audacity to stop carrying Red Vines!”
“They’re the same thing as Twizzlers, Sheldon.”
“I beg to differ! Not only are they different in name, composition, and production site, but Red Vines have had the same Original Red Twist Flavor since 1952 when the formula was altered from its original raspberry. The manufacturers of Twizzlers, by contrast, have been expanding and radically altering their flavor selection since the candy’s conception in 1845. I ask you, Leonard, how am I to trust a licorice candy that refuses to embrace consistency?”
“Leonard, please can we put him out of our misery? It might give us a shot at the Nobel Peace Prize!”
“Howard. Sheldon.” Penny greeted them sweetly, pointedly ignoring her ex. She didn’t want to give Leonard the impression that she would be his rebound girl after Priya went back to India and their relationship fizzled and died, no matter how much she missed him. “Have a good time at the movie?”
Leonard opened his mouth to reply-or, perhaps, to remind Penny that he existed-but Sheldon was quicker. “It was a nightmare, Penny. The theater changed its entire candy selection without notifying me!”
“No one at the theater has to notify you when things change, Sheldon,” Leonard sighed. “It’s a business. The change was probably a well thought-out marketing decision meant to increase the theater’s profit margin.”
“If that’s the case, then that theater’s management team just shot itself in the proverbial foot. Twizzlers will never out-sell Red Vines. Had they informed me of their intended switch I might have saved them from their inevitable future ruin.”
Howard sidled up to the bar and took a seat neat to Raj. “As those of you playing at home probably already guessed, Sheldon’s special brand of crazy scared the girls away.”
“Untrue,” Sheldon countered. “Amy Farrah Fowler merely suggested that satisfying their inexplicable and insatiable feminine craving for new shoes would be a more economical use of their time than listening to the vendor’s futile attempts to justify the theater’s candy selection.”
“They ditched us,” Leonard told Penny by way of clarification.
Although this was a perfect place to insert a snide comeback, Penny was too dismayed by the unfairness of the situation to bother. “What? They went shoe shopping with Priya and not me?”
Leonard was quick to pacify Penny. “It’s just because Bernadette knew you were working.”
“Leonard. Excuse me, Leonard, but this conversation no longer interests me. Take me home.”
“Sheldon…”
“No, take him home!” Howard insisted. “You know how he gets when he spends too much time among mere human beings.”
“Fine.” Leonard threw Penny a glance she couldn’t quite decipher before voicing his defeat. “Come on, Sheldon. Let’s put you back in your natural environment.”
“Can we stop for Red Vines on the way home?”
“You have a desk drawer full of them already. Why do you need more?”
“Leonard, you promised me Red Vines this evening. The Red Vines at home aren’t from this evening.”
“Oh, for crying out loud…”
“That won’t be necessary. This situation can be rectified easily enough.”
There was a beat after Leonard and Sheldon finally made their way out of the Cheesecake Factory. That beat slowly stretched itself into an awkward silence as Penny, Raj, and Howard either fished for viable topics of conversation or studiously avoided making eye contact. Penny went back to polishing her glass in an attempt to look like she was working.
“So,” Howard eventually began, smiling at Raj and ignoring the Indian Glare currently aimed at his forehead, “How’s it going, buddy?”
“As well as it can for someone who was forgotten by his friends and forced to spend the evening in lonely exile, drowning his sorrows while said friends were getting busy with their girlfriends.” With that sullen answer, Raj finished off this third drink. Penny chose not to hit him with a fourth. One of them had to preserve their livers.
Besides, Penny kind of liked the idea of fading into the background and eavesdropping. It made her feel like a nosy glass-polishing ninja.
Howard had the good graces to look mildly repentant. “If it helps, there was no getting busy. What you saw with Sheldon was pretty much the whole show. We didn’t even get to see the previews.”
Raj was not prepared to stop feeling put out so easily. “What happened doesn’t matter, dude! You ditched me so you could do unspeakable things to Bernadette in a movie theater!”
“It’s not like that,” Howard said with a nervous and wholly unconvincing laugh. “Besides, she’s my fiancée. I’m practically obligated to do unspeakable things to her.”
“So that’s how it is, is it? Now that you’re engaged to the first woman you’ve met who can tolerate you and isn’t your mother, it’s okay to ignore your best friend?”
“No! …Okay, kind of, but you don’t get it! This is my first real chance at having a real relationship with a real girl!”
“Oh, and what is our relationship? Imaginary?”
Penny couldn’t help but glance over as the conversation between Howard and Raj became increasingly heated. Both of them seemed genuinely upset. That wasn’t too surprising for a Raj who had been drinking, but anything resembling genuine feelings out of Wolowitz threw Penny off. He was so much easier to get when he was being a troll.
“I didn’t say that,” Howard replied in a nominally quieter voice, trying not to draw too much unwanted attention. The Cheesecake Factory was all but abandoned; not even his greatest efforts would have been enough to attract a crowd.
Raj crossed his arms stubbornly and rested them on the bar, the very picture of petulance. “It’s because she’s prettier than me, isn’t it?”
Howard’s forced smile seemed to be frozen in place. “What?”
“You know what! How many times do we have to have this conversation, dude? Every time you see a pretty girl you go running after her.”
“Not true! Remember that time when we went to the tar pits?”
“You mean the time you swore not to leave me for a strange woman and you did anyway?”
“You said I could!”
“I didn’t mean it!”
Howard stood, sending his barstool sliding noisily. “You know what? This isn’t what I came to talk to you about, so just forget it. Have fun wallowing in self-pity!”
Raj mimicked Howard’s action, coming precariously close to knocking both his stool and himself to the floor. “No, dude! Wait!” he entreated, irritation gone. “What did you want to talk about?”
Penny narrowly prevented herself from echoing the question. She remembered that she was playing nosy ninja just in time.
With a drawn-out sigh, Howard took his seat once more and Raj did the same. Unless Penny’s earlier drinks were deceiving her (and she didn’t think that was all that likely), both of them were edgier than two friends reconciling after a brief spat should be.
Curiouser and curiouser.
“It’s about Bernadette,” Howard said carefully. Before Raj could change the setting on his Indian Glare from stun to kill, he hurriedly added, “I think we’re calling it off.”
Raj was baffled. “The engagement?”
“Yeah.” Howard toyed with his outrageously shiny cuff links. “That. Even before tonight we were kind of… you know.”
“Disenchanted with the idea of spending the rest of your lives together?” Raj provided helpfully.
Howard winced. “Something like that, thanks.”
“Always happy to help.”
“What I’m trying to say,” Howard continued, “is it just… isn’t right, if you know what I mean. Bernie’s great, really, but with her job prospects and all I feel like I’d always be…”
“Hopelessly unworthy of her?” Raj supplied as soon as Howard paused. “A kept man? A ball and chain, dragging her down and preventing her from reaching her full potential?”
“Okay, stop helping me,” Howard said flatly.
Raj looked at him innocently and made the universal lip-zipping motion.
Reasonably sure that he would be able to continue uninterrupted, Howard took a deep breath. “The thing is, when I think about a life with Bernadette… I’m not sure that that’s what I want.”
In the pause that followed, Raj leaned closer, listening attentively. Penny couldn’t help but sneak a little closer to the duo, too.
“What do you want?” Raj prompted, vow of silence forsaken for curiosity’s sake, a hopeful look in place.
“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t involve getting expensive watches and being married to Dr. Bernadette Wolowitz.”
In the ensuing silence, Howard alternated between grinning awkwardly and fidgeting; Raj studied him as if he was an inscrutable equation. Penny, mind reaching only one possible conclusion, waited.
She waited a moment more.
In the next moment, her short supply of patience ran out and she slammed the glass in her hand down with a noise that made Howard and Raj jump in unison. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed with the triumph and enthusiasm of one who had just made sense of one of the world’s great mysteries. She got everything now! Raj hadn’t been jealous of Howard for landing Bernadette at all! “You two are complete gay for each other!”
Their mouths dropped open in disbelief and, very possibly, horror. As they began to stammer out their shocked denials, Penny wondered if she hadn’t been a little too blunt.
Or maybe she hadn’t been blunt enough since Howard and Raj were too busy scrambling for words and picking their jaws up off the floor to either tell her she was off her rocker or that she was absolutely right.
“Come on! I don’t know how I missed it!” Penny pressed, not about to let the guys get away without hearing her revelation out in full. “Raj-I was pretty sure about you, but then I figured you were in denial and then we slept together and I wondered-and Howard! I thought you were just a creep with serious mommy issues, but you were totally trying to hide it, weren’t you? Oh my God! You two are so obvious!”
“We’re not gay,” Howard managed when Penny had to stop to breathe, the width of his panicked smile directly proportional to his discomfort.
Raj, however, seemed to be in the midst of an epiphany. “We do love each other very much,” he told Penny with the utmost sincerity.
Howard was reduced to shaking his head in denial.
A less-than-innocent grin spread across Penny’s face. “If there’s nothing between you, Howard, why’re you two holding hands?”
Raj and Howard glanced down at the countertop where their hands were indeed being held together by their interlaced fingers, just as they had been since Penny initially announced her startling hypothesis. They looked from their hands to each other and back as if they had no idea how they had managed to get themselves into such a position.
After some serious contemplation, Raj shrugged and confirmed Penny’s suspicions as if they should have been obvious to him, as well. “Dude. Maybe we are gay.”
Howard didn’t look any less alarmed, but he offered no argument.
Penny graced them with a patronizing smile. Her geniuses could be real idiots about the things that mattered.
Author: ohsoboring
Fandom: The Big Bang Theory
Pairing/characters: Raj/Howard, Penny, Leonard, Sheldon; mentions of Penny/Raj, Penny/Leonard, Leonard/Priya, Howard/Bernadette
Rating: PG for substance abuse?
Disclaimer: Owner of nothing, fic unbeta'd
Prompt: We're not gay, we just love each other... no, wait, maybe we are gay (any fandom) from queer_fest
Summary: Sometime after the season finale Raj gets drunk, Howard gets confused, Sheldon does not get Red Vines, and Penny explains it all.
Warnings: Spoilers for everything! No sex!
Author's Notes: I actually wrote a fic that wasn't entirely without sex! Yay! And my first BBT fic even though I adore the show and need the next season to happen immediately. Original post is here. I still can't believe actual strangers are leaving comments! Sorry, sorry... just excited. This whole "posting stuff publicly" is still shiny and new. But I'm still sticking copies away in this journal just in case the community vanishes.
“So what’ll it be?” Penny asked her first-and possibly only-customer of the evening. The Cheesecake Factory’s bar wasn’t exactly one of the busiest watering holes in Pasadena, particularly on a Thursday night. In short, it was a lonely job. Penny didn’t like having a job that reflected her social life, and the pay wasn’t even all that great.
Upon receiving the anticipated lack of a reply, Penny put down the glass she was polishing (it was already as clean as it was going to get, but there was something about the action that made her feel more like a legitimate bartender and less like a waitress who happened to man the bar) and approached Rajesh. “Still not talking to me, huh?” she asked with a slightly bemused smirk. “It this is how you treat all the girls you have one-night stands with, it’s no wonder you’re still single.”
Raj glared at Penny. The expression’s intended fearsomeness was largely canceled out by his garish sweater vest and the fact that he looked about as miserable as Penny’s job made her feel.
“I know, I’m one to talk.” The waitress poured herself a pity shot of straight tequila and choked it down before starting on Raj’s (considerably tamer) drink of choice. “Look, we agreed that it never happened, right? It was just a mistake between two third wheels who both had a little too much to drink.”
Raj raised an eyebrow and wiggled four fingers at her.
She sighed. “Two fourth wheels, whatever. You know what I mean and it sounds pathetic either way.”
The astrophysicist nodded in agreement.
“There. One Grasshopper for you,” Penny sat the drink down and retrieved another for herself, “and two shots of tequila closer to kidney failure for me.”
They threw back their respective drinks. Penny made a face as the second shot burned its way down her throat and vowed to cut herself off for the night. She had already tried the loneliness-drunkenness-Raj cocktail and had no intention of doing it again. Possibly. For the moment, at least, Penny’s inner voice of reason was uninebriated, in control, and prepared to avoid bad decisions; she’d have to check back with it later.
Now that the wheels of conversation were greased with booze, Penny asked Raj a question that she fully expected an answer to. “Where’re the other guys?”
Raj sighed rather melodramatically and, selective mutism momentarily cured by the wonders of liquor, replied, “Enjoying Anything Can Happen Thursday with Bernadette, Priya, and Amy in a dark movie theater.” He pushed his empty cocktail glass towards Penny in a less-than-subtle request for a refill. “Sheldon and Amy will be the only ones watching the movie without someone’s tongue down their throats.”
The mental image that conjured up was appalling. Penny didn’t want to think about Howard in any context that involved tongues and imagining Leonard with Indian Barbie-no, these were not thoughts she was going to pursue. “Decided not to go along for the show, huh? Can’t say I blame you.”
Bad decisions be damned. Penny sneaked another drink and handed Raj a second Grasshopper.
“No, I wanted to go,” he admitted forlornly. “It’s X-Men: First Class, Penny. I need to go.”
Penny gave Raj a pitying look. “Aw, sweetie. Did they leave without you again?”
He nodded and took a long drink in reply.
“Forget about them,” she said with pep that she definitely wasn’t feeling. “We can hang out. As friends.”
“Isn’t it a bit late to be friends after-“
“No, please. No. Don’t say it,” Penny interrupted. “It didn’t happen. My bad for bringing it up.”
Raj frowned into his second drink. After some hesitation, he said, “I wouldn’t mind saying it happened.” He gave Penny a look that was one part hopeful and two parts desperate. “I wouldn’t mind if it happened again, either.”
“Not happening,” she assured him, still more than sober enough to muster something like conviction. “No offense, Raj, but it shouldn’t have happened at all. I didn’t need things to get even more awkward with Leonard.”
He aimed a sullen glare at the countertop. “Why is it always about Leonard? What about things being awkward with me?”
“Because things’ll always be awkward with you, sweetie. You can’t even talk to me when you’re not drunk off your ass.”
“I am not drunk off of my ass or any other body parts,” he protested with vehemence that nearly sent him toppling off of his barstool, “and I’ll have you know that I’m quite a catch! I’m a very good listener and a passionate but tender lover!”
“A, that last part is completely not true and b, then why aren’t you at the movie and doing the nasty with your girlfriend if you’re such a catch?”
Much to Penny’s dismay, her barb coincided with the onset of Raj’s state of drunken melancholy. He hid his head in his hands and proceeded to get all weepy.
Penny nobly resisted the urge to bang her head against the countertop until she was senseless and tried to console her… whatever Raj was with a pat on the shoulder. “Raj, I didn’t mean it, okay? You’re just fine in bed, I promise.”
“That’s not the point,” he sniffled into his hands. “Why aren’t I at the movie, Penny? Why do Howard and Bernadette get to play tonsil hockey and I don’t?”
Penny didn’t think that Raj needed to be reminded that most of his troubles could be blamed on his pathological fear of talking to women while sober (although part of her delighted in this information because it meant that there was at least one person in the world with a more depressing love life than hers). She zeroed in on his mention of Bernadette and Howard instead. Thinking about them was creepy, but definitely a step above wondering what Leonard and Priya were currently up to. “You’re still crushing on Bernadette, aren’t you, sweetie?”
Raj’s pity-party was abandoned in favor of wide-eyed horror.
“Oh, come on,” Penny continued, mixing a third drink for Raj and trying to convince herself that she had enough self-control to refrain from helping herself to another. She was not going to sleep with Raj again because they were both lonely and drunk. Absolutely not. “It’s not like no one noticed how upset you were after Howard proposed to her.”
Judging by Raj’s stunned silence, Penny figured she was onto something. She put a companionable (and entirely platonic) hand on his. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly nice girl out there for you who doesn’t mind carrying a conversation by herself. Seriously, if Howard can get a great girl like Bernadette in spite of all of his creepiness, a good guy like you has to find someone eventually.”
Raj seemed torn between making an argument and simply sinking into a hopeless, drunken stupor. His dilemma was nullified by the sound of familiar voices.
“-the audacity to stop carrying Red Vines!”
“They’re the same thing as Twizzlers, Sheldon.”
“I beg to differ! Not only are they different in name, composition, and production site, but Red Vines have had the same Original Red Twist Flavor since 1952 when the formula was altered from its original raspberry. The manufacturers of Twizzlers, by contrast, have been expanding and radically altering their flavor selection since the candy’s conception in 1845. I ask you, Leonard, how am I to trust a licorice candy that refuses to embrace consistency?”
“Leonard, please can we put him out of our misery? It might give us a shot at the Nobel Peace Prize!”
“Howard. Sheldon.” Penny greeted them sweetly, pointedly ignoring her ex. She didn’t want to give Leonard the impression that she would be his rebound girl after Priya went back to India and their relationship fizzled and died, no matter how much she missed him. “Have a good time at the movie?”
Leonard opened his mouth to reply-or, perhaps, to remind Penny that he existed-but Sheldon was quicker. “It was a nightmare, Penny. The theater changed its entire candy selection without notifying me!”
“No one at the theater has to notify you when things change, Sheldon,” Leonard sighed. “It’s a business. The change was probably a well thought-out marketing decision meant to increase the theater’s profit margin.”
“If that’s the case, then that theater’s management team just shot itself in the proverbial foot. Twizzlers will never out-sell Red Vines. Had they informed me of their intended switch I might have saved them from their inevitable future ruin.”
Howard sidled up to the bar and took a seat neat to Raj. “As those of you playing at home probably already guessed, Sheldon’s special brand of crazy scared the girls away.”
“Untrue,” Sheldon countered. “Amy Farrah Fowler merely suggested that satisfying their inexplicable and insatiable feminine craving for new shoes would be a more economical use of their time than listening to the vendor’s futile attempts to justify the theater’s candy selection.”
“They ditched us,” Leonard told Penny by way of clarification.
Although this was a perfect place to insert a snide comeback, Penny was too dismayed by the unfairness of the situation to bother. “What? They went shoe shopping with Priya and not me?”
Leonard was quick to pacify Penny. “It’s just because Bernadette knew you were working.”
“Leonard. Excuse me, Leonard, but this conversation no longer interests me. Take me home.”
“Sheldon…”
“No, take him home!” Howard insisted. “You know how he gets when he spends too much time among mere human beings.”
“Fine.” Leonard threw Penny a glance she couldn’t quite decipher before voicing his defeat. “Come on, Sheldon. Let’s put you back in your natural environment.”
“Can we stop for Red Vines on the way home?”
“You have a desk drawer full of them already. Why do you need more?”
“Leonard, you promised me Red Vines this evening. The Red Vines at home aren’t from this evening.”
“Oh, for crying out loud…”
“That won’t be necessary. This situation can be rectified easily enough.”
There was a beat after Leonard and Sheldon finally made their way out of the Cheesecake Factory. That beat slowly stretched itself into an awkward silence as Penny, Raj, and Howard either fished for viable topics of conversation or studiously avoided making eye contact. Penny went back to polishing her glass in an attempt to look like she was working.
“So,” Howard eventually began, smiling at Raj and ignoring the Indian Glare currently aimed at his forehead, “How’s it going, buddy?”
“As well as it can for someone who was forgotten by his friends and forced to spend the evening in lonely exile, drowning his sorrows while said friends were getting busy with their girlfriends.” With that sullen answer, Raj finished off this third drink. Penny chose not to hit him with a fourth. One of them had to preserve their livers.
Besides, Penny kind of liked the idea of fading into the background and eavesdropping. It made her feel like a nosy glass-polishing ninja.
Howard had the good graces to look mildly repentant. “If it helps, there was no getting busy. What you saw with Sheldon was pretty much the whole show. We didn’t even get to see the previews.”
Raj was not prepared to stop feeling put out so easily. “What happened doesn’t matter, dude! You ditched me so you could do unspeakable things to Bernadette in a movie theater!”
“It’s not like that,” Howard said with a nervous and wholly unconvincing laugh. “Besides, she’s my fiancée. I’m practically obligated to do unspeakable things to her.”
“So that’s how it is, is it? Now that you’re engaged to the first woman you’ve met who can tolerate you and isn’t your mother, it’s okay to ignore your best friend?”
“No! …Okay, kind of, but you don’t get it! This is my first real chance at having a real relationship with a real girl!”
“Oh, and what is our relationship? Imaginary?”
Penny couldn’t help but glance over as the conversation between Howard and Raj became increasingly heated. Both of them seemed genuinely upset. That wasn’t too surprising for a Raj who had been drinking, but anything resembling genuine feelings out of Wolowitz threw Penny off. He was so much easier to get when he was being a troll.
“I didn’t say that,” Howard replied in a nominally quieter voice, trying not to draw too much unwanted attention. The Cheesecake Factory was all but abandoned; not even his greatest efforts would have been enough to attract a crowd.
Raj crossed his arms stubbornly and rested them on the bar, the very picture of petulance. “It’s because she’s prettier than me, isn’t it?”
Howard’s forced smile seemed to be frozen in place. “What?”
“You know what! How many times do we have to have this conversation, dude? Every time you see a pretty girl you go running after her.”
“Not true! Remember that time when we went to the tar pits?”
“You mean the time you swore not to leave me for a strange woman and you did anyway?”
“You said I could!”
“I didn’t mean it!”
Howard stood, sending his barstool sliding noisily. “You know what? This isn’t what I came to talk to you about, so just forget it. Have fun wallowing in self-pity!”
Raj mimicked Howard’s action, coming precariously close to knocking both his stool and himself to the floor. “No, dude! Wait!” he entreated, irritation gone. “What did you want to talk about?”
Penny narrowly prevented herself from echoing the question. She remembered that she was playing nosy ninja just in time.
With a drawn-out sigh, Howard took his seat once more and Raj did the same. Unless Penny’s earlier drinks were deceiving her (and she didn’t think that was all that likely), both of them were edgier than two friends reconciling after a brief spat should be.
Curiouser and curiouser.
“It’s about Bernadette,” Howard said carefully. Before Raj could change the setting on his Indian Glare from stun to kill, he hurriedly added, “I think we’re calling it off.”
Raj was baffled. “The engagement?”
“Yeah.” Howard toyed with his outrageously shiny cuff links. “That. Even before tonight we were kind of… you know.”
“Disenchanted with the idea of spending the rest of your lives together?” Raj provided helpfully.
Howard winced. “Something like that, thanks.”
“Always happy to help.”
“What I’m trying to say,” Howard continued, “is it just… isn’t right, if you know what I mean. Bernie’s great, really, but with her job prospects and all I feel like I’d always be…”
“Hopelessly unworthy of her?” Raj supplied as soon as Howard paused. “A kept man? A ball and chain, dragging her down and preventing her from reaching her full potential?”
“Okay, stop helping me,” Howard said flatly.
Raj looked at him innocently and made the universal lip-zipping motion.
Reasonably sure that he would be able to continue uninterrupted, Howard took a deep breath. “The thing is, when I think about a life with Bernadette… I’m not sure that that’s what I want.”
In the pause that followed, Raj leaned closer, listening attentively. Penny couldn’t help but sneak a little closer to the duo, too.
“What do you want?” Raj prompted, vow of silence forsaken for curiosity’s sake, a hopeful look in place.
“I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t involve getting expensive watches and being married to Dr. Bernadette Wolowitz.”
In the ensuing silence, Howard alternated between grinning awkwardly and fidgeting; Raj studied him as if he was an inscrutable equation. Penny, mind reaching only one possible conclusion, waited.
She waited a moment more.
In the next moment, her short supply of patience ran out and she slammed the glass in her hand down with a noise that made Howard and Raj jump in unison. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed with the triumph and enthusiasm of one who had just made sense of one of the world’s great mysteries. She got everything now! Raj hadn’t been jealous of Howard for landing Bernadette at all! “You two are complete gay for each other!”
Their mouths dropped open in disbelief and, very possibly, horror. As they began to stammer out their shocked denials, Penny wondered if she hadn’t been a little too blunt.
Or maybe she hadn’t been blunt enough since Howard and Raj were too busy scrambling for words and picking their jaws up off the floor to either tell her she was off her rocker or that she was absolutely right.
“Come on! I don’t know how I missed it!” Penny pressed, not about to let the guys get away without hearing her revelation out in full. “Raj-I was pretty sure about you, but then I figured you were in denial and then we slept together and I wondered-and Howard! I thought you were just a creep with serious mommy issues, but you were totally trying to hide it, weren’t you? Oh my God! You two are so obvious!”
“We’re not gay,” Howard managed when Penny had to stop to breathe, the width of his panicked smile directly proportional to his discomfort.
Raj, however, seemed to be in the midst of an epiphany. “We do love each other very much,” he told Penny with the utmost sincerity.
Howard was reduced to shaking his head in denial.
A less-than-innocent grin spread across Penny’s face. “If there’s nothing between you, Howard, why’re you two holding hands?”
Raj and Howard glanced down at the countertop where their hands were indeed being held together by their interlaced fingers, just as they had been since Penny initially announced her startling hypothesis. They looked from their hands to each other and back as if they had no idea how they had managed to get themselves into such a position.
After some serious contemplation, Raj shrugged and confirmed Penny’s suspicions as if they should have been obvious to him, as well. “Dude. Maybe we are gay.”
Howard didn’t look any less alarmed, but he offered no argument.
Penny graced them with a patronizing smile. Her geniuses could be real idiots about the things that mattered.