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Collide, or, The Cooper-Ballard Convergence	By : FemmeBono Category: 1 through F > The Big Bang Theory Views: 4469 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Big Bang Theory, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Cht 4

You’re barely waking

and I’m tangled up in you
Over the next few weeks, Sheldon settled into an Amy free schedule once again. The guys noticed he was despondent over him and Amy not working out, but no one knew quite what to say to Sheldon to bring him back to himself. Cantankerous, exacting and self-centered as he may sometimes be, things weren’t the same without him. Leonard and the boys found themselves filling empty silences with random factoids and trying to start arguments over the merits of DC over Marvel, but to no avail. Penny even tried to get him to talk about his feelings, but was only rewarded with a semi-snide remark about hippies. It still didn’t even sound like the old Sheldon, but she was at a loss as to what to do. She tried leaving cocoa at his door one night, and apple cider with cinnamon sticks the next night, but he had taken to going to bed even earlier than usual and sometimes would stop in the middle of dinner to get up and go to his room.
After many tense, whispered conversations, the general consensus was to leave him alone until he worked himself out of his funk. Leonard and Penny each kept hoping that he would eventually give in and come to one of them to talk. Penny felt sure that if he didn’t ask Leonard for advice, he would come to her. They were nearly at the point of breaking down and calling Mrs. Cooper when Sheldon finally unstuck himself, or rather Whitney did it for him.

He had cocooned himself in his bed as usual, a luminous fish glowing on his bedside table, when a loud thump overhead jarred him awake.
“Danger! Danger!” he yelled. Looking around, he saw no immediate threat and slowly came back to himself. He listened intently for a moment , cataloguing the sounds in his apartment to try and gauge what woke him. He heard Leonard slowly resume snoring, followed by a soft thump from above his head.
Sheldon glanced at the clock and slid hastily out of bed, wondering what his neighbor could be doing up at this ungodly hour. He belted his robe over his Tuesday pajamas and slid his feet into his Superman slippers, before padding quickly upstairs.

Whitney raised her head from the floor where she had landed when she fell out of bed. Knock knock knock! “Whitney!” Knock knock knock! “Whitney!” Knock knock knock! “Whitney!” she heard in a stage whisper. Whitney rose on wobbly legs and rubbed a shaky hand over her face before trying to smooth her hair down. She wrapped a deep blue kimono-style robe over her naked body and shuffled to the door.
“Sheldon?” she asked, her voice raspy and thick.
“Whitney! Are you alright?” Sheldon asked hesitantly, before deciding that the question was moot. Before she could even respond, he changed tactics. “May I come in?”
“Ah, um…sure,” she said, clutching the robe together across her chest. “You can have a seat now, I actually have chairs.”
Sheldon made a spectacular show of trying out both chairs and every cushion of the couch, before settling in the far left cushion, just as he did in his own apartment. Whitney chose the opposite end of the couch, switching on the lamp behind her on the end table, grabbing an emerald green throw and draping it over herself as he gazed intently at her. He noted her red-rimmed eyes in the soft lamp light. Her nose was swollen and her face was slightly blotchy as though she had been crying.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Sheldon said, turning to face her more fully, “what is wrong?”
“Ah, I had a bad dream,” she sighed, sniffing a little. “It happens sometimes, usually when there’s a lot going on and I get pretty stressed. I guess starting a new job and moving to a new place has finally taken its toll.”
“So how often do you intend on waking me up like this?” Sheldon ventured.
“Like what? How did I wake you?” said Whitney, clearly nonplussed. Ohh great! What had he heard?
“Why thumping around up here, of course!” Sheldon said, as though stating the obvious.
“Oh,” Whitney groaned, unconsciously rubbing her arm. “I fell out of bed. Sorry, I guess your room is right under mine.”
“Fell out of bed?!” Sheldon said, sliding over and pulling up her robe sleeve to take a look. Sure enough, a large red spot showed where she had obviously hit the floor quite hard. “You could have broken something.” He released her arm more gingerly that he had taken it, marveling as an afterthought that he had touched her at all.
“I’m fine,” she said, trying to shift the attention from herself. “I’m sorry I woke you though.”
Sheldon would have none of it, however. He had felt the tremor run through her and finally realized the haunted look in her eyes for what it was. “What were you dreaming about?” he asked quietly.
Whitney took a deep breath and let it out before answering. “Nothing, just—“
“’Nothing’ indeed! Something had you rolling out of bed in the middle of the night waking me out of a dead sleep thinking you were being attacked.”
“Look, I just relive a lot of the things I’ve seen and—wait, you thought I was being attacked and you ran up here?”
“Well yes.”
“That was pretty brave. Most people would just cower in their beds, or call the cops and let them deal with it. Very few people run toward danger; believe me, I know.”
“Be that as it may,” Sheldon said, waving off her mention of his heroic tendency. “If you are having nightmares and reliving trauma in them, that is a clear sign that you are not well.” Whitney snorted at this and teared up. “You should be getting help.”
“I am getting help Sheldon!” Whitney’s voice trembled. “I know I’m broken. I don’t need you to tell me. It’s just that this kind of thing takes a while to fix, if it can be fixed at all!”
She broke down at that, burying her face in the back of the couch and giving in to the shakes. She did not see Sheldon raise his hand tentatively, only to drop it a moment later. She felt him rise off the couch and the rejection that came with it. But instead of hearing the door, she heard him rustling around in her kitchen, clinking china and opening and shutting cabinets, then messing around with the stove. She was too forlorn to turn and see what he was doing, but minutes later she heard the tea kettle whistling and started upright as a tissue was proffered right under her nose while she sat hanging her head.
“Thank you,” she said stuffily, dabbing at her eyes and nose. Sheldon handed her a cup and saucer, which she took gratefully. ”Sheldon, you didn’t have to do that.”
“I did,” he replied matter-of-factly. “It’s a non-optional social convention. When someone is upset you offer them a hot beverage. Usually when I am in the depths of despair I like hot cocoa or if my whole world has been uprooted, I like cider with cinnamon sticks, but you had none, so I made tea instead.”
Whitney managed a watery smile at this.
“But you should know, Whitney that you are not broken, whatever you might think,” Sheldon shook his head earnestly, capturing her eyes with his solemn gaze.
“All heroes have traumas in their past that revisit them. Bruce Wayne and his parents’ death, Peter Parker and his guilt over his uncle dying, the list goes on.”
“I’m not a hero, Sheldon,” Whitney said morosely. “I certainly don’t feel like one.”
“Well, neither do they,” Sheldon continued, unabated. “Heroes never feel brave, they simply do what has to be done because no one else can or will. You’ve shown that even in a paintball mission. I can imagine it is much the same in your military life.”
“Sheldon, I’m pretty sure none of your super heroes have scars.”
“Of course they do!” he replied emphatically. “Perhaps not Superman because he cannot be harmed by anything from Earth, but all of the X-Men are nothing but mutated humans. They would scar. As would Iron Man, who is also a mere man with a radioactive cell in his chest. He has a gaping wound there. You have nothing like that.”
Whitney laughed grudgingly, conceding that he was correct. She reached over and grasped the hand that rested on his thigh. “Thanks Sheldon. I mean it.” She felt him stiffen up and jerked her hand back, remembering Amy’s actions at their party a few weeks ago. “Sorry, I forgot you don’t like to be touched.”
He opened his mouth to say something, but her next words stopped him cold. “I don’t really like people to touch me either. A casual handshake is one thing, but I have to really trust someone before I can tolerate anything else, you know?”
“I just don’t like germs,” he said, remembering how he had just lifted her sleeve barely an hour before, and how she had clasped his hand in gratitude. She was quite upset however, but Sheldon Cooper filed this knowledge away in the hopes that he could start a social experiment with Whitney Ballard. He wanted to see if she would accept his touch when she was calmer, happier, and aware of her surroundings. He wanted to know if she trusted him enough to let him.
“Whitney, ” he said, breaking the small silence that had drifted between them while he made his hypothesis and started planning tests to run. “Would you like to come downstairs and eat dinner with us later this evening? Wednesday night is Halo night, and we’ll be having Thai again.”
“Sure, Sheldon,” Whitney smiled genuinely at the invitation. “I think I’d like that.”
“Excellent,” Sheldon replied and launched himself off the couch. “I’m going to go see if I can get a REM cycle in before it’s time for me to get up and get ready for work. Good night!” And with that, Sheldon exited her apartment, leaving Whitney feeling jittery for a whole other reason while her tea slowly got cold.

Lyrics from Howie Day's "Collide"
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Collide, or, The Cooper-Ballard Convergence