Disclaimer: The Big Bang Theory does not belong to me; I merely wished Sheldon did.

Chapter 26: The Friendship Reconnection

"She looks just like you, Penny," Raj said as he watched Sheldon nursing his daughter.

"Aw, that's so sweet," Penny said, feeling touched by Raj's words.

Raj then shattered the moment. "I've never seen such a tight grip on a bottle before except when you're drunk and clutching your wine. Then again, I imagine Sheldon would be holding on that tightly to a Nobel Prize if one came his way."

"Too true," Sheldon said, before adding to Raj's comment. "But he's right, she does take after you with that grip. And just like you, I'd have to take a crowbar to her to separate her from her bottle."

Bernadette chalked one up for the girls as the baby let rip with an enormous burp. "But that's definitely Sheldon's area... full of gas."

Even Raj tittered at that one, and Sheldon handed over his daughter to Penny. "Her diaper needs changing."

"And it's your turn."

"I did it last time," Sheldon said, "and besides, I'm out of disposable gloves."

"She doesn't have a communicable disease," Penny growled, carrying Callie over to the changing cart. "Do you, sweetie? Isn't Daddy a silly billy?"

Callie laughed, getting her revenge when she turned two…

Sheldon screamed, "Penny!"

Alarmed by the sound of fear in his voice, Penny sprinted into their sitting room to see him cowering against the wall, their tiny daughter holding a potty out in front of her. "I see Callie has a gift for you."

"Get it away! Get it away!" Sheldon said, trying to become one with the wall and escape from his hopeful daughter.

Callie began to cry, and Penny walked over to her and took the potty. "Oh, you did a number two for Daddy! That's such a good girl."

Callie's tears quickly dried up as she nodded proudly. "Me big girl."

Penny grinned and straightened up, shoving the potty ever closer to Sheldon. "Don't you want to see this, honey?"

"Penny, please just get it away from me."

Penny stepped away as Callie turned to her father. "Up, Daddy."

Sheldon, however, slunk away. "I'm sorry, I just can't. I know where those hands have been."

Penny bent down and scooped up her once again tearful daughter. "Come on, let's go show Bernie what you've done."

"Yay!"

Sheldon dashed towards the bathroom, intent on washing his hands, even though he hadn't even come close to touching the potty.

Penny was waiting for him when he came out. "Sheldon, you can't just back off from her like that. She's really proud of what she did."

"Excrement is nothing to be proud of," Sheldon said, not getting it. "You don't see me calling to you to show off what bowel movements I've produced every day, do you?"

"Thankfully no, but she's two, Sheldon, two!" Penny said shaking her head at him. "And speaking of excrement it's your turn to go out and buy more diapers. We're running low."

"I swear that baby uses more diapers in a month than her sister did in a year," Sheldon complained loudly. "It's costing a fortune."

"Then perhaps you should wear a condom the next time you decide to live dangerously," Penny said, reminding him of the incident which had seen Bernie's conception.

"It would certainly be cheaper and a lot less messy," Sheldon said as he headed for the door. "Or I could just give up on coitus altogether."

"Okay," Penny said, smiling sweetly. "You do that."

"You wouldn't last a month," Sheldon said, smirking.

"I went a whole year without it when I was first dating you," Penny reminded him. "Let's see who breaks first, "Mr. 'I'm only doing this in the name of science'."

Sheldon went red. Whenever he had wanted to instigate sex, it had been Sheldon's excuse for the first year of their marriage. However, after discovering what third base truly meant, and that coitus and the run-up to it was indeed something he found more than a little pleasurable, he'd eventually given the excuse up. "Penny…"

"Yes, Sheldon?"

"You win, damn you and your feminine wiles."

Penny blew him a kiss. "I love you."

"I know," Sheldon said, smiling at her, ducking at the pillow that came hurtling his way before he shot through the door and out to safety.

Callista's next attack on her father's sanity came when she turned three…

"No! No! No!"

Penny signed as she hurried into Sheldon's study, drawing to a halt as she saw what had brought on this outburst. "Oops!"

"Oops!" Sheldon exclaimed as he angrily turned to face his wife. "Oops is what you say when a nuclear missile goes missing or a train comes off the tracks. Oops is not what you say when your daughter has destroyed a month's work!"

"Sheldon, she's three and didn't know any better," Penny said, admiring what was patently a sunflower. "And it's obvious she's got some sort of talent."

"A talent for destruction," Sheldon growled as he went to wipe the board clean, only to stop when Penny screamed at him.

"Sheldon, you can't, at least not until I've taken a photo. It's a great drawing." Penny pulled out her phone and snapped a picture of the flower on the board. "Perhaps she's gonna be an artist one day, like that Van Gogh guy."

"Oh dear Lord, can my day get any worse?"

"What's wrong with being an artist?"

"What's wrong with being an artist?" Sheldon echoed. "Where do I begin?"

"You don't," Penny said, watching as Sheldon returned to cleaning the white board off of her daughter's artwork. "But if our daughter wants to be an artist, then that's what she's gonna be, and when one of her paintings is hanging in a museum somewhere, you'll remember this moment and that I was right."

Sheldon snorted derisively. "I doubt that very much; most artists only become renowned after they die."

"That's probably because they had a father who didn't support them when he was still alive to do so!"

"No, it's because they're so worried about people not liking their work, they're too afraid to put it on show, their true talent only really being discovered after their death," Sheldon said in his usual know-it-all way. "So unless our daughter becomes a genius painter at a very young age and then dies soon after, you're never going to be right."

Penny stood for a moment, her mouth open before spinning and turning on her heel.

"Women!" Sheldon then went back to his whiteboard, dismissing all thought of his daughter, and what he personally thought was mediocre work, out of his head.

"I've drawed you a picture, Auntie Amy," four year old Callie said, presenting Amy with a picture.

"Why, thank you, Callie," Amy said, taking the picture and looking at in alarm, before quietly saying out of the corner of her mouth to Sheldon, "What is it?"

"I've no idea," Sheldon said just as quietly, not wanting Penny to overhear them, as she was still convinced their daughter was some sort of genius. "Callie, tell Aunt Amy what it is."

"It's a monkey."

Amy turned the picture around. "Where's its head?"

"There," Callie pointed, before toddling off to talk to her mother who was playing with her little sister Bernie.

"And Penny thinks she's going to be a great artist?" Amy asked, as dumbfounded as Sheldon.

"There's no convincing her otherwise," Sheldon said, nodding towards his study and leading Amy into it. "I've done my best to try and show her what supposedly constitutes great art and the markers just aren't there. And Callie just cries if I tell her it's rubbish, so I get into trouble for doing that too."

"I could always insert a few probes into the right side of her brain to try stimulating those areas that are linked to artistic talent, although if I was to go too deep you might instead up with a homicidal maniac for a daughter rather than just a lousy painter."

"I suppose that's a bad idea then," Sheldon said in a somewhat glum voice. "Penny gets mad if I let Callie anywhere near a dinner knife; I could just imagine how unhappy she'd be if our daughter suddenly decided that a meat cleaver might be more suitable."

"Perhaps you should try something different," Amy suggested. "Take Callie into the lab where you work."

"I did that once and it was a disaster," Sheldon said, remembering his daughter running screaming around his office as she peed all over his floor after pulling off her diaper. "She got way too excited."

"Isn't that a good sign?"

"I never considered that." Sheldon then shook his head. "But I really don't have the time to watch her and work."

"Oh well, it was just an idea," Amy said, before making a suggestion, "But you can always take me."

"Only if you promise not to take off your underwear and pee on my floor."

"I see you've developed a sense of humor, Sheldon."

"Oh, I wasn't joking."

Amy studied his serious face. "Really?"

"Bazinga! Of course I'm joking, but still, just so we're clear, no panty removal, no matter how excited you get."

"Dada," the blonde baby uttered.

"No, you want Mama," Sheldon told his young son. "Mama is going to change your diaper."

"Dada," the baby repeated.

"I think Robert has spoken," Penny said, as she finished helping her daughter put her coat on. "And it's Dada's turn to change his diaper."

"What's it worth if you do it?" Sheldon asked, having quickly gotten used to bargaining with his wife after Callie's birth, and it had continued when Bernie had followed after Sheldon had lived dangerously on the kitchen table, something that had ended up at a charity store as Sheldon had refused to eat off of it ever again.

"Uh-uh, just man up and do it."

"Yes, Daddy, you do it," Callie said, her accent most definitely British and sounding nothing like her parents, although Penny could do a more than passable copy of it if she tried.

"Pass me the gloves, apron and clothes peg," Sheldon said resignedly, having downgraded over the years to the three simple items.

Penny and her daughters watched as Sheldon affixed the peg to his nose and tried to not breathe as he changed Robert's diaper, almost breaking records to put it into the diaper pail and then returning to clean up his son and get him re-diapered.

"I can't wait until he's toilet trained," Sheldon declared as he finished strapping the tag on the diaper.

"You and me both," Penny said with a grin as she handed over a romper suit. "And we need you to hurry up. We're going to be late for the awards ceremony."

Bernie interrupted with a question. "Will Aunt Bernie and Uncle Raj have ice-cream, Mummy?"

"Yes, they will, hon, strawberry, just as you requested."

"Is Uncle Howard going to be there?" Callie excitedly asked her father.

"Of all the people our seven year old chooses to have a crush on, it has to be him," Penny muttered under her breath.

"It's only because he does magic tricks."

"And he made poo stuff in space," Bernie added.

"Enough about that, Bernie," Penny said, hating any mention of the toilet that Howard had helped to construct for the Space Station a short time before the Arctic expedition that had brought her and Sheldon together.

Sadly for Penny, both of her daughters, however, had been utterly fascinated by it and, since moving permanently back to California three years previously, they had pestered Howard with a stream of questions every time they saw him, questions he was only too glad to answer and in graphic detail to both girls' delight.

"I'm more concerned that she might want to become an engineer," Sheldon said, giving a shudder. "Any child of mine deserves to be more."

"She could become an actress."

"I want to be a spacewoman," Bernie said, putting paid to her parents' discussion about her future. "Then I can poo in space."

"I'm going to kill Howard," Penny said as she took Robert from Sheldon. "Let's go."

Four hours later, Sheldon was sat with Penny, who was squeezing his hand tightly. "Squeezing my hand won't make any difference as to who wins the award."

"I know, I know."

Penny tensed up as the nominations were read out, and then finally the winner of the award for Best Actress.

'Best Actress in a Comedy: Penny Cooper for playing Betty Barton in Scientists Gone Wild.'

Penny hurried up to the podium, shock evident on her face. "Thank you everyone for voting for me and for giving me this award. And a big thank you goes out to Leonard Hofstadter and Carrie Anders for writing the series, and to Andrew Lefler for casting me in it. Without these three, this would never have been possible. But most of all I'd like to thank my husband, Sheldon, for believing in me."

Penny made her way back to sit next to Sheldon, shaking hands with Leonard, who was sitting on the row behind them. "Who'd ever have thought you'd become a screenwriter."

"It pays better than loser teacher," Leonard said, a big grin on his face. "And I got to meet a lot of pretty actresses, although I think that make-up artists are much prettier." He winked at his wife, a make-up artist who he had met on the set of Scientists Gone Wild.

His wife, Katherine, a petite redhead, smiled back at him. "Nicely done. Now pay attention, it's your turn."

Leonard, together with his co-writer, then had their moment in the spotlight, their series winning an award for their writing.

When Leonard returned, Sheldon held out his hand. "Congratulations, Leonard."

Leonard took Sheldon's hand and shook it. "Thanks, Sheldon, and thanks for letting me use you as a character. Nigel is easily everyone's favorite in the series."

"I should imagine so if he's based on me," Sheldon said in a smug voice, before smiling at Penny, "although my wife is my favorite."

"He has to say that if he wants sex tonight," Penny said with a bigger grin than her husband, before directing a question at Leonard. "Speaking of sex, will Betty and Nigel ever get together like Sheldon and me?"

"That would be too close to real life," Leonard said, having toyed with the idea before rejecting it as the series had gone on. "I was thinking of bringing in someone just like him to partner him up with."

"You're kidding?" Penny asked in horror.

"Nope," Leonard said, before asking, "Do you know anyone I could base her on?"

Remembering how much, even to her dying day, the now deceased Meemaw had wanted Sheldon to marry Amy, it wasn't too hard for Penny to think of someone. "Amy Farrah-Fowler Rantzenburger."

"The girl who married Helena's grandson last year?"

"That's the one."

Sheldon pulled a face. "I did tell her to keep her panties on when she visited my workplace, but did she listen? No."

Penny nudged him. "Neville spilled coffee all over her and she had to take her clothes off to dry them."

"It all boils down to the same thing," Sheldon contended. "And if you ask me…"

Leonard interrupted them before Sheldon could get into the swing of things. "Penny, do you have her number?"

Penny pulled out her cell phone, which was on silent, and acquired it. "I'm actually going to see her tomorrow so I can talk to her but I think she'll say yes, especially if you agree to let her character have sex with Nigel."

"Only if he can wear gloves to touch her," Sheldon joked, once again demonstrating the sense of humor that Amy had noted he had acquired.

"I must put that in," Leonard said, whipping out his ever present notebook and making a note.

Rolling her eyes, Katherine asked, "Are you going to the party afterwards?"

Sheldon shook his head. "I have an award ceremony of my own I need to fly out for tomorrow."

"That's right, you're collecting a Nobel Prize, aren't you?" Katherine said, before making a suggestion to Leonard. "You could include that in the series."

"Nah," Leonard said, dismissing the idea out of hand. "I can't have Nigel getting too much of a big head. He'd be far too much like Sheldon then."

"It isn't boasting if the award is truly deserved," Sheldon argued. "And for me it's truly deserved."

"Of course it is," Penny said soothingly, shooting Leonard a 'shut up if you don't want him to go on' look. "Now let's listen to the last few awards."

After the awards ceremony had began to draw to a close, the foursome stood up, Leonard drawing Sheldon to one side as they began to slowly file out. "I really meant it when I said thank you tonight, and even though we've managed to patch together a friendship of sorts, I'd really like for us to be true friends again. I've missed you."

Spotting a good opportunity, Sheldon decided to have a little fun with Leonard. "Agreed… but only if you agree to change my son's diapers whenever you visit."

"Change his diapers?"

"Yes."

Leonard searched Sheldon's face to see if he was joking. "You're joking, aren't you?"

"Bazinga!" Sheldon said, laughing at the look on Leonard's face. "Of course I am. It won't be long before he starts toilet training. We can save that proviso for my next child."

"Is Penny pregnant again?" Leonard asked worriedly, having had to write around her once already, the show not going into production until almost two years after the initial pilot had been shot.

"Not yet, but she's going to be," Sheldon said, having agreed with Penny that they wouldn't leave such a large gap between Robert and their final baby.

"Perhaps I'll team her up with Roger," Leonard mused.

"Howard's counterpart, I think not!" Sheldon immediately said. "My wife is not kissing him!"

"It's just acting."

"Tom Renfrew wouldn't be acting," Sheldon groused, hating the actor who played Roger. "He looks at Penny as if she's the cut-up hotdogs in his spaghetti."

"And I'll quit if I have to kiss that slime ball," Penny butted in, also loathing the man who played Howard's counterpart Roger, more than she ever had loathed Howard, and that was really saying something.

Katherine agreed with her, warning her husband, "And you'll be sleeping in the spare room if you make her do that. The man's hideous."

It was Katherine who swayed Leonard. "Fine, I'll team her up with Dev then."

"He's cute," Penny said, approving of Leonard's choice.

"Couldn't she just inseminate herself?" Sheldon asked, hating it whenever Penny was called upon to kiss anyone other than him.

"With a turkey baster I suppose," Penny said, remembering Sheldon's former desire for her to use such an instrument.

"If that's your preference."

"My preference isn't for public consumption," Penny said playfully as they reached the elevators.

"That's our cue to leave," Katherine said, taking Leonard's hand. "Goodnight both. Don't worry, Penny, I'll make sure he treats your character well."

Penny kissed Katherine's cheek and smiled at Leonard, before taking Sheldon's hand and allowing him to lead her into the elevator. "Who'd have ever thought we'd be friends with Leonard again?"

"Not me but your career was more important than holding a grudge."

Penny did not bother to remind Sheldon that he had taken some persuading, or rather a mix of tears and blackmail, to have anything to do with Leonard again after he had discovered that Leonard had written the comedy based on their lives. However, Sheldon had agreed that Leonard had changed when he had finally been talked into meeting him, but only after Leonard had given Sheldon a truly heartfelt apology for ruining his experiment. Only then had Sheldon agreed to consider Penny's request that she fly out to California to take part in the series that she had successfully auditioned for in London.

Instead of pointing any of this out, Penny pulled Sheldon's head down to kiss him, saying, "I love you,"

"And I love you," Sheldon responded when the kiss ended and they walked out of the elevator and to their hotel room. "So earlier, did I hear you correctly about us having coitus tonight?"

"You did, but only in the name of science."

"Well, if it's in the name of science, I suppose I could be persuaded." Sheldon shook his head. "Then again, maybe not. It is late."

Penny shut the door and unzipped her strapless dress, letting it fall to the floor, leaving her standing in just her panties and high heels. "How about now?"

"You need to try harder than that," Sheldon teased as he began to shed his clothes.

"I'll see you in the shower." Penny shed her final article of clothing before swaying unashamedly across the floor of the hotel room and into the bathroom.

Sheldon's own entrance was delayed as he picked up Penny's dress and folded his clothes.

Closing the door to the bathroom and switching on the extractor fan, Sheldon finally joined Penny in the shower, immediately noting a problem. "You didn't bring my anti-dandruff shampoo!"

"I'm standing here naked and ready for sex and that's all you can say?"

"But it's important. I don't want people deluged with particulates from my scalp when I'm receiving my Nobel Prize," Sheldon complained. "Can you just imagine the headlines?"

"Yes," Penny said, folding her arms. "Scientist's wife splatters crowd with blood when she uses award to beat the living daylights out of him because he won't make love to her!"

"I suppose they wouldn't notice my dandruff then," Sheldon mused.

"Sheldon, you don't currently have dandruff and I'm quite certain it takes more than one day to produce it." Penny quickly put a finger to his lips. "And no, I don't want to know how long it really takes, no matter how fascinating it is."

Sheldon removed her hand. "I know. You want coitus, don't you?"

"A whole lot more than I want to discuss your dandruff." Penny handed over the soap. "And you can start by washing my back…"

"Where do you think I should put it?" Sheldon asked, his eyes glowing as he held up the medal he had been awarded. "Up here with my restraining order from Leonard Nimoy or with the one from Professor Proton?"

"I think you should put it wherever it makes you happy," Penny said, well aware this would go on for hours if she gave him a single answer.

"How about if I put it next to this?" Sheldon pulled a box out of his pocket and handed it to Penny.

Penny opened up the box to see a necklace with a heart-shaped pendant with a snowflake inset into it. "Sheldon, it's beautiful."

"I was going to have it made into a ring, but when I showed it to Callie she said it should be inside a heart because that means that her daddy loves her mummy."

Penny burst into tears. "Oh, Sheldon!"

"There, there," Sheldon held his wife, taking care she was nowhere near his medal; he didn't want salty tears getting on it.

Penny pulled away after a few moments, wiping her tears away and handing the necklace to Sheldon. "I told you our daughter was a genius."

Sheldon put on the pendant and took Penny back into his arms. "True, but you don't have to be a genius to know how much I love you."

Holding back the tears that were threatening again, Penny smiled tremulously at Sheldon. "And I love you and I always will."

No further words were spoken as the two kissed, and then Sheldon took hold of Penny's hand. "Come on, let's go do something in the name of science to celebrate."

Laughing, Penny let Sheldon tug her into their bedroom, before closing the door on the world.

A big thank you to everyone who's read this and supported my efforts.