Chapter Text
The Nobel Prize in Physics sat on the coffee table like an accusation.
Sheldon Cooper stared at how the metal gleamers, the certificate with his named embossed in elegant script sits right next to it. He felt absolutely nothing. Well, that wasn't entirely accurate. He felt something. A hollow, gnawing sensation in his chest the he'd been trying to ignore for the better part of three years. Tonight, surrounded by his so-called friends in apartment 4A, that sensation had crystalized into a single, undeniable truth:
The was supposed to be the happiest day of his life.
It wasn't.
"Another toast!" Leonard announced, raising his glass with the kind of forced enthusiasm that made Sheldon't teeth ache. "To Sheldon! The Nobel Prize winner! My best friend and roommate who finally achieved his lifelong dream!"
The words rang false. The always did with Leonard, but Sheldon had spent so many years dismissing his own observations, convincing himself that he was the one who didn't understand social cues, that he'd stopped trusting his instincts. Now, watching Leonards smile, too wide too bright, with something ugly lurking behind his eyes, Sheldon wondered how he ever been so blind.
He glanced at around the room, cataloging details the way he always did when his mind needed something concrete to latch onto.
Howard sat on the arm of the coach, one hand resting on Bernadette's shoulder. She looked exhausted, dark circles under her eyes, her smile not quite reaching them. When had that happened? When had Bernadette started looking so... diminished?
Raj was nursing his drink in the corner, unusually quiet even for him. He'd barely said two words all evening, and when Sheldon caught his eye, Raj looked away quickly. Guilty? Uncomfortable? Both?
And there was Penny.
Penny, who was on her fourth, no fifth, glass of wine. Penny, who laughed too loudly at Leonard's jokes and flinched slightly whenever he touched her. Penny, whose hands trembled just enough that Sheldon could see the liquid rippling in her glass.
:Penny, you're empty," Leonard said, already reaching for the bottle before she could respond. "Let me top you off."
"Oh, I'm okay..." she started, but Leonard was already pouring, filling her glass nearly to the brim.
"Come on, it's a celebration! Live a little." His tone was light, teasing, but there was an edge to it. A command disguised as a suggestion.
Penny took the glass. Of course she did. She always did.
Sheldon felt something twist in his guts.
"So, Sheldon," Amy said, her voice pulling him back to the conversation. "Now that you've won the Nobel Prize, what's next? Are you going to finally focus on our relationship? Maybe we could take that trip to Napa I've been suggesting. Or..." she lowered her voice conspiratorially, though everyone could hear, "...we could start thinking about the next phase of our lives. Children, perhaps?"
The room went silent.
Sheldon's mind went blink, then immediately flooded with thousands of objections, each one fighting for dominance. He didn't want children, or better yet he never wanted children with her. He'd told Amy this. Multiple times. And yet here she was, in front of all their friends, presenting it as though it were a foregone conclusion.
"Amy, we discussed this..."
"Oh, Sheldon, don't be difficult," she interrupted, waving her left hand dismissively. "You always say that, but I know you don't really mean it. Once you think about it logically, you'll see that having children is the natural next step for a couple our age."
"I have thought about it logically. The conclusions remained unchanged"
Amy's smile tightened. "We'll talk about this later."
Translation: You'll do what I want eventually, because you always do.
Sheldon looked at Leonard, expecting...what? Support? A joke to diffuse the tension caused by this situation? But Leonard was smirking into his drink, clearly enjoying Sheldon's discomfort.
"Marriage changes people, buddy," Leonard said. "You'll come around. Any knows what's best."
Amy knows what's best.
The words echoed in Sheldon's head, and suddenly he was cataloging other moments. Other times when his objections had been dismissed, his boundaries ignored, his clearly stated preferences overridden because of Amy, or Leonard, decided they knew better.
The birthday party he hadn't wanted. The tie he'd been forced to wear to the Nobel ceremony because Amy said his Flash tie was "inappropriate". The sex he'd agreed to not because he wanted it, but because Amy had made him feel like something was wrong with hime for not wanting it.
His hands clenched into fists.
"I need some air," he said, standing abruptly.
"Sheldon," Amy started, but he was already moving towards his room, ignoring her protests.
He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, breathing hard. Through the wood, he could hear the party continue without him. Leonard's voice, making some joke about "Sheldon being Sheldon." Laughter. The clink of glasses.
No one came to check in him.
Sheldon walked to hi window and looked out at the city. Pasadena stretched before hime, lights twinkling in the darkness. Somewhere out there, people were living their lives. Happy lives, maybe. Lives where they weren't slowly suffocating under the weight of other people's expectations.
He'd won the Nobel Prize. The culmination of the decades of work, the validation of everything he'd dedicated his life to. And he felt nothing but a crushing sense of wrongness.
When had everything gone terribly off course?
His mind drifted to the apartment across the hall. 4B. Penny's apartment, though she barely lived there anymore. She spent most of her nights at Leonard's room now, and Sheldon had watched her transform over the years from a bright, vibrant women who'd knocked on their door asking to use their Wi-Fi into... this. This hallow version of herself that drank too much and laughed too loud and never, ever said no to Leonard.
Sheldon's mind, that magnificent instrument that had earned him the highest honor in physics, began to work.
He thought about Penny's acting career. How she's been so close to landing that role in the serial killer movie, the one that could have been her big break. How Leonard had made her feel guilty for spending so much time at the auditions. How he'd "joked" about her lack of talent until she'd stopped going to auditions altogether.
He thought about her education. How excited she had been about taking that history class at the community college. How Leonard had made her feel stupid for not understanding the material as quickly as he did, until she'd dropped out.
He thought about her job at the pharmaceutical company. How good she was at it. How she had been promoted twice and was making more money than Leonard. How Leonard had suddenly became "concerned" about her work-life balance, suggesting maybe she should look for something less demanding.
He thought about the drinking.
Penny had always enjoyed wine, but it had been social. Fun. Now it was... something else. Something darker. And Leonard was always there, refilling her glass, encouraging her to "relax", to "not be so uptight".
Sheldon's hands were shaking.
He turned from the window and looked at his room. His sanctuary. Except it wasn't, was it? Because Amy had slowly been colonizing his space too. Her toiletries in his bathroom. Her clothes in his closet. Her opinions on how he should rearrange his action figures, what temperature he should keep the apartment, whether he should eat Thai food on a Tuesday.
When did I stop being myself?
The question hit him like a physical blow.
He sank onto his bed, his mind racing. This wasn't right. None of this was right. He'd spent so long being told that he was the problem, too rigid, too particular, too Sheldon, that he'd stopped questioning whether maybe, just maybe, the problem wasn't him at all.
What if Leonard wasn't his friend?
The thought was so radical, so fundamentally opposed to everything Sheldon had believed for over a decade, that he almost dismissed it immediately. But he forced himself to examine it. To really lookout their relationship with the same analytical rigor he'd apply to any scientific problem.
Leonard had always been jealous of him. Sheldon had known that, but he'd assumed it was harmless. Normal, even. But what if it wasn't? What if Leonard's constant need to diminish Sheldon's achievements, to make him feel socially inadequate, to control who he spent time with and how... what if that wasn't friendship at all?
What if it was something much worse?
Sheldon stood and began to pace, his mind working faster now. He thought about Howard and Raj. His real friends. The ones who'd stood by him even when he was difficult, who'd celebrated his successes without resentment, who'd never tried to change who he fundamentally was.
They looked miserable too.
When had that happened? When had his brilliant, funny, loyal friends become these subdued shadows of themselves?
A sound from the living room made him pause. Penny's laugh, high and brittle. Then Leonard's voice, too low to make out the words, but the tome was clear. Condescending. Controlling.
Sheldon's jaw clenched.
He walked to his desk and pulled out his laptop. His fingers flew over the keyboard, pulling up files he hadn't looked at in years. Research from his graduate school days, when he'd been obsessed with theoretical physics and the possibility of time travel.
He'd written a paper. A brilliant paper, if he did say so himself, outlining the theoretical framework for temporal displacement. It had been purely academic, of corse. The energy requirements alone made it impossible with those years technology.
But what if it wasn't impossible.
What if he could go back? Just... just far enough. To before everything went wrong.
His heart was pounding now, adrenaline flooding his system. This was insane. This was the kind of thinking that got scientists laughed out of their fields. But Sheldon had never care about being laughed at, and right now, staring at his old research, he felt the first sparks of hope he's experienced in years.
He could fix this.
He could save Penny. Save himself. Save all of them.
He just needed to figure out how.
And he had to talk to Howard.