Disclaimer: I'm a teenage Canadian

in a long time, so I'll try to summerise. Sheldon gets the gang minus Penny to go with him to the Arctic Circle, and this is the legendary night. The Night the Heat Went Out.

Rated T for the plotting of murder.

The Night the Heat Went Out

"I can't believe we agreed to go along with this," said Howard. "Five weeks in and the only discovery I've made is that cabin fever is real and we become homicidal when locked in with him." Luckily, Sheldon was outside, retrieving supplies, as they were running low.

Howard reached over the counter for his shrimp with lobster sauce and retreated to the couch and TV, careful not to sit in Sheldon's new designated spot. A terrible dehydrated version of all their normal Monday food was beside his. Leonard and Raj took theirs and sat down, Sheldon's tangerine chicken still sitting on the table and the left side of the couch still empty.

"Any new ideas for Shel-murder 101?" asked Raj.

Leonard made a face. "I'll go first. Um, what about throwing his cushion outside, along with all his food, and shutting the door behind him?"

"Eh, six outta ten for that one," said Howard.

"I dunno, dude, freezing to death is a pretty rough way to go," said Raj fairly.

"I got one," said Howard, sitting down his food and smiling. "What about taking advantage of the local culture?" At Leonard's and Raj's blank looks, he continued, "I'm talking about sled dog teams. Tie one to each of his limbs and shout, 'Mush!'"

"Isn't that a bit brutal? At least with mine you can act like it was an accident," said Leonard.

"Nothing's too brutal when it comes to Cooper," said Howard determinedly. "Especially since he said that I wasn't allowed to go and get supplies anymore because I didn't have a PhD and that I was going to screw it up because I don't have a Dr. in front of the Wolowitz." He stabbed his food.

"Sensitive point?" asked Raj in mock sympathy.

"You think?" said Howard sarcastically.

"I'm gonna go find The Matrix," said Leonard loudly. "That's what you wanted to watch, right?" He left to look in their DVD closet.

"Since Sheldon's going to be gone so he can't tell us that the third movie makes no sense, yeah," said Raj irritably. "He should really keep his movie opinions to himself. Neo gave himself up, setting Smith in him, so that the Machines could send a virus through the virus to all the Smiths, destroying the issue and saving the Matrix."

"Plus, Carrie-Ann Moss is so smokin' with those karate moves and guns," said Howard, miming a few and her signature kung fu kick. "She's the whole reason I took karate in math camp."

"What about—what's her name—Niobe?" said Leonard, re-emerging with the trilogy in hand.

"She doesn't get as much screen time, but she does rock that ship," said Howard, smirking.

They all looked at the empty spot beside Leonard's chair, where a kitchen chair should be with a certain blond complaining about Howard's disgusting comments.

Leonard slipped in the first movie. They finished the first two and were half-way done the third when the door opened and Sheldon came in, frenzied- and frozen-looking and packages coming out of his Kazoo. He dumped some of the food on the counter, the rest spilling over to the floor. He bit his mitts and flung them off, ripping his hat by the tassels into the corner, and taking off his coat.

"Couldn't you have waited another hour, at least until the huge Machine-Zion fight?" groaned Leonard.

"Didn't you notice it's colder in here?" said Sheldon breathlessly.

"Yeah, you left the door open; air that's negative fifty is whooshing in here with snow that'll eat through your skin like alien oil," said Howard waspishly, slamming the door and scattering the snow with his buckled black boots into the floorboards.

"That's not what I meant," said Sheldon, suddenly still and emotionless. "We've lost the heat."

There was a thick silence as they all looked at each other, then at the thin mist that rose in front of their mouths, which had grown thicker.

"And, by my calculations, we have less than an hour before the electricity goes out completely," said Sheldon, picking up the remote and shutting off the TV, snorting, and hitting the OFF button on the DVD player. Their laptops went off next, and the lamps, stove and microwave were unplugged.

"We need flashlights, blankets and as many portable, reliable thermometers as we have," rattled Sheldon as he went to the bedroom they shared, rifling through their bags. "We're going downstairs to sleep tonight, stay warm, and hopefully wake up." He poked his head up, two flashlights in his hand. "Everyone's responsible for their own beds."

"How much cold can a human body stand?" asked Raj.

"Depends," said Sheldon. "I imagine we can last the night, so long that there aren't any massive snow storms and we're trapped for days on end, in which case we'll run out of food and eventually will be degraded to starving cannibals."

"At least I'll live," said Howard. "I don't have that much meat on my bones," he added.

"No one's eating anyone!" said Leonard.

"If all goes well," said Sheldon, now pulling the covers off their beds and dragging them behind him downstairs like a long cape.

Raj shrugged and searched for the packs of AA batteries they packed for the other half dozen flashlights. Howard got all the coats, hats and mitts he could find and threw them down to Sheldon, who ran back for the emergency sleeping bags. Leonard went through everything and found four digital thermometers and eight mercury ones.

Ten minutes later, they had a huge array of sleeping bags and blankets set up with glowing thermometers and flashlights stuck in the centre with duck tape. It looked like the living room of a kid's slumber party. They put on their coats and miscellaneous clothes over their normal thermal outfits, and crawled into their bags, their heads meeting in a four-pointed star.

Raj slowly drifted off, as did Howard and Leonard, but Sheldon stayed awake, a digital thermometer in hand. He didn't take his unblinking eyes off the blue screen, as the temperature slowly dropped. It got to minus seventy before he turned around and shook his friends.

Shake. Shake. Shake.

"Leonard."

Shake. Shake. Shake.

"Leonard."

Shake. Shake. Shake.

"Leonard."

"Whaaa...?" Leonard rubbed his eyes and grabbed blindly his glasses. Confusion briefly crossed his face before he realised where he was and what had happened.

"We're going to die," whispered Sheldon loudly.

Leonard rolled over and looked at him straight in the eye. "What?" he said.

Howard snored loudly, which Sheldon ignored. "If we don't conserve body heat, we're going to die." He shoved the glowing blue numbers under Leonard's face. "See, minus—good Lord—minus seventy-six. I've calculated that we will last like this for the next three hours, and I don't know about you but I need my REM sleep and would prefer to wake up from this cycle."

Leonard rubbed his forehead, a trickle of fear making it through his sleep haze. "What do you want to do?"

"I believe that if we all sleep in the same bed, as close as possible, we might survive with our combined body heat."

Leonard nodded sleepily and shook Raj and Howard awake. Reluctantly, they rearranged their beds, so that they were all in a row and were as close as they could get without sleeping on top of each other; their hats' tassels and loose mitten fingers crossed.

A few quick games of Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock and Raj and Leonard were forced to the edges, Sheldon's logic after losing three games was that since that he was the tallest, ergo, he had the most body heat and should go in the center, while Howard argued that he should, too, because of his own short stature would make him freeze to death. Murder plans gone, they agreed.

Not an hour later...

Shake. Shake. Shake.

"Leonard."

Shake. Shake. Shake.

"Leonard."

Shake. Shake. Shake.

"Leonard."

"Sheldon, shut up and go to sleep," said Leonard angrily. No one had managed to doze off with the fear of hypothermia hanging over their heads.

"I'd love too: it'd be a more peaceful way to go," said Sheldon.

Raj sat up and looked over the others. "What do you want to do? We take off our coats and freeze; we stay still, we freeze."

"Duck under the covers and take your clothes off. All of them," said Sheldon in one easy breath.

Another thick moment of silence hung between them.

"You know how long it's been since I've heard those words?" said Howard sarcastically. "Months and months and months, and now who says them? Sheldon."

"We need to get closer," argued Sheldon, pulling Howard's hat off. "Our combined body heat, so close together would keep our core temperatures from plummeting. In fact, we'd be so hot, I wouldn't be surprised if we sweat."

"That doesn't make this anymore appealing," said Leonard.

"Couldn't you have brought Penny, too?" asked Howard.

Sheldon unzipped his coat and was trying to wriggle out of his thick sweaters while lying down when they noticed. "I don't want to die," said Sheldon simply. "Can't you ignore social convention for one night?"

"Which social convention?" asked Raj.

"The one where one does not see one naked unless one plans to engage in sexual activities with them," said Sheldon, now biting his mitts off and unravelling his scarves. "Such as coitus."

"Look at that, he does know," said Howard.

The others tried to discreetly look away as Sheldon tossed his clothes behind him. Parka, sweaters, t-shirts and long-sleeved, ski-pants, thermal pants, boots got kicked off at the bottom, socks, and finally, a pair of Spiderman briefs.

Then, all of a sudden, Sheldon turned around and started to undress Leonard.

"Get your hands off me!" shouted Leonard, shoving him away.

Sheldon rolled and almost over Howard, who pushed him back in disgust.

"This won't work if it's only me. Look, the rest will even close our eyes." Aggravated, Sheldon shoved Leonard. "Come on, strip." No one moved. "Let me put this in terms you can understand: we will be unconscious in twenty minutes, dead within the hour if you do not take off your clothes."

A very long moment passed, before Leonard took off his glasses—for both the sanity of his eyes and the privacy of others—and started to take off his own clothes. Another long moment, and Howard and Raj both followed suit.

"If anyone looks, I'll kick them," muttered Howard, before slamming his head under a pillow and trying to sleep.

Sheldon looked at him, put out. "That's impractical. Howard, why are you being deliberately stupid? I know that, most of the time, you can't help yourself, but please, don't do this intentionally."

"What's impractical?" he murmured, his fists bunching in the sheets.

With the lack of women besides the odd trip to the station for supplies, none of them had seen anything female in weeks. Since Howard and Sheldon who, at the best of times, maintained an uneasy truce and at the worst dove at each others' throats, Howard had gotten the brunt of Sheldon's temper and was the sharpest himself from being without a single woman.

"Our heads have to go under the covers," said Sheldon, "in order to make sure we have all the body heat possible inside the low density air pocket and that—"

Howard took the pillow off his head and fixed him with a look that could kill. "Sheldon, if I let you do this—which is very unlikely—will you shut that whole in your face?"

Unblinking, Sheldon said, "It's impossible for me to close either my nostrils or ear cannels without the help of—"

"Sheldon!"

"Yes."

After a long stare down, Howard looked over at Leonard. "What about you?"

"I can't see anything anyways without my glasses," said Leonard, rolling on his side, away from them.

"And Raj?"

Raj shrugged and said, "It's the best way."

"Damn peer pressure. Fine," said Howard irritably.

The covers flew up and over their heads, and eyes snapped shut. The most uncomfortable evening that any of them could ever remember followed. It was filled with "ouch"s, "sorry"s, and awkward silences. As per Sheldon's prediction, it got very warm in their little nest. They tried to distract themselves, explaining to their own minds why the body heat moved the way it did, but it didn't help, their hands at their areas or folded on their chests, determined to not touch anyone.

"I suggest we never speak of this again," said Howard two hours later through gritted teeth.

"Agreed," said Leonard.

Raj looked over at them. "What's wrong with this?"