The celebration was Howard's idea. "It's Columbus Day. We're not celebrating the genocide; we're celebrating the filmography of Chris Columbus. It's cinematic reappropriation."
So, they ended up in Leonard and Sheldon's living room, watching Gremlins. The familiar absurdity was a comfort.
"Your family isn't expecting you for Thanksgiving?" Leonard asked Penny during a quiet moment.
Penny shook her head, eyes fixed on the screen where a Gremlin spun in a microwave. "Nah. My brother's… court date is that week. It's gonna be a whole thing back home. Mom said it's probably best if I sit this one out." She tried to sound casual, but the hurt bled through. Her brother, the aspiring chemist—though his chosen compound was methamphetamine—was more of a draw than she was right now.
"Well, you're welcome here," Leonard said quickly. "Howard's mom is doing the cooking."
Howard puffed up. "That's right. The Wolowitz traditional Tur-briska-fil. A turkey, stuffed with a brisket, stuffed with gefilte fish. It's not as good as it sounds. In fact, it's significantly worse. The gravy has the consistency of regret."
Raj, who had been quietly nursing a drink, let out a sudden, wet sniffle. He stood up abruptly. "Excuse me," he mumbled, and hurried down the hall to the bathroom.
The movie ended in awkward silence. When Penny left for her shift, Raj finally returned, his eyes red.
"What's going on, buddy?" Howard asked, his tone uncharacteristically soft.
Raj took a shaky breath. "My grant. It's finished. The university hasn't renewed it. No grant, no job. No job…" his voice broke, "no visa. I have to go back to India."
The room went still. The idea of Raj not being there—with his designer sweaters, his dog, his silent terror of women—suddenly felt like a hole punched in their world.
"There must be something," Leonard said. "Another department?"
"I've tried! For six months! I've just been… sitting in my apartment. Applying online and watching videos of corgis in costumes. I'm not qualified for anything else here."
Sheldon, who had been straightening the DVD cases, turned. "Going back to India seems… inefficient. You've fully assimilated to American casual dining. But as a stateless person, you wouldn't be bound by immigration laws. You could become a pirate. Operate in international waters. It's a viable, if unconventional, career path. Also, historically, very few women in piracy. Your selective mutism wouldn't be a problem."
Raj stared at him, a tear tracing a path down his cheek. "I don't want to be a pirate, Sheldon! I want to stay here! I'll miss hamburgers! I'll miss Beefaroni!"
———
The next day at Caltech, Raj's despair hung around him like a fog. Howard, however, marched up with a scheming look. "I have an in. Dr. Laughlin. He's putting together a team for stellar spectroscopy. He needs someone to process data. It's not glamorous, but it's a job."
Raj's hope was instant and desperate. "Laughlin? The one who yelled at Sheldon?"
"The very same! And get this—his post-doc on the project is Dr. Catherine Millstone." Howard wiggled his eyebrows. "She's got a PhD in astrophysics and she was a semi-finalist for Miss California 2005. She's… a vision."
This was a problem. Raj could handle Laughlin's ire. He could not handle a beautiful colleague. Still, the threat of deportation focused his mind. He wore his best suit.
The interview started well enough. Laughlin, still gruff, seemed impressed by Raj's published work. Dr. Millstone was there, smiling politely. She was, if anything, more stunning in person. Raj felt his throat beginning to close.
Panic seized him. As Laughlin droned on, Raj's eyes darted to a sideboard where a decanter of amber liquid sat. Sherry. Liquid courage. The moment Laughlin turned to a chart, Raj, in two quick, furtive moves, downed two full glasses.
The effect was immediate and catastrophic. The warm bloom in his chest loosened his vocal cords and wiped out his filter. Dr. Millstone asked a technical question about his methodology.
Raj heard himself say, in a slurred, confident tone completely foreign to him, "Oh, the methodology is very rigorous. Almost as rigorous as the stitching on your blouse, which is doing God's work, by the way. A stellar effort holding up… the cosmos." He winked.
The room froze. Dr. Laughlin's jaw went slack. Dr. Millstone's polite smile vanished, replaced by a look of icy shock. The silence stretched for a century.
"I think," Dr. Laughlin said, his voice dangerously quiet, "this interview is concluded."
———
Back at the apartment, Howard was furious. "What happened? Laughlin's assistant said you were 'culturally unfit'! What does that mean?"
Raj, sober and humiliated, couldn't bear the truth. He grasped at the first excuse. "He's British! I'm Indian! Our cultures… they haven't gotten along since Gandhi!"
Leonard frowned. "Wait, are you saying he discriminated against you? Because that's a serious complaint, Raj. We could go to the department."
"No!" Raj yelped. "It's… it's been handled. I've already filed the paperwork. Very messy. Best to just drop it."
At that moment, Sheldon entered, a manila folder in hand. He took in the scene: Howard's confusion, Leonard's suspicion, Raj's profound misery.
"Your attempt to secure employment with Dr. Laughlin failed," Sheldon observed.
"Yes, Sheldon, thank you for the update," Raj muttered into his hands.
"I have a different proposal. My CRYSTAL data has opened a new line of inquiry. I need someone with a meticulous eye for astronomical data to help sift through gamma-ray spectra for potential string theory signatures. It's tedious, unglamorous work."
Raj looked up, a flicker of hope. "You're offering me a job?"
"I'm offering you a research position on my grant. The pay is standard. The visa sponsorship would be a logical part of the arrangement."
Tears of relief welled in Raj's eyes. "Sheldon, I… I don't know what to say."
"You could say 'thank you.' But there's an interview process. My lab, my standards. Meet me in my office tomorrow at 10 AM. Don't be late."
———
The next morning, Raj appeared at Sheldon's office door at 9:58 AM, sweating in another good suit. Sheldon's office was, as always, unnervingly orderly. He gestured for Raj to sit.
Sheldon steepled his fingers, his face a mask of serious concentration. "Alright. Let's begin. Question one: A gamma-ray burst is detected at redshift z=2.3. Detail the first three steps of your analysis protocol."
Raj, on solid scientific ground, answered flawlessly, his voice gaining strength.
"Question two," Sheldon continued, impassive. "You're offered a collaboration with a researcher whose published work you believe is fundamentally flawed. Do you: A) Accept and try to correct them from within, B) Politely decline citing scheduling conflicts, or C) Publish a pre-emptive rebuttal?"
Raj thought. "B. Politely decline. Life's too short, and my karma is already questionable."
"A bureaucratically safe, if intellectually cowardly, answer. Noted." Sheldon made a meaningless mark on a blank pad. "Final question."
He leaned forward, his blue eyes locking onto Raj's. The atmosphere grew thick. Raj braced for something about quantum chromodynamics or galactic rotation curves.
"What…" Sheldon began, his voice dropping to a dramatic whisper, "…is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
Raj's brain stuttered. The connection took a moment, traveling from panic, through confusion, and landing on a memory: a worn-out DVD case, the smell of popcorn, Leonard's laugh, Howard's bad British accent. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Their third annual viewing marathon.
A disbelieving laugh bubbled out of him. "What?"
Sheldon's stern facade didn't crack. "I said: what is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
"I…" Raj grinned, playing along. "I don't know that!"
Sheldon's eyebrows shot up. "African or European?"
Raj threw his hands in the air, the last of his anxiety melting into pure joy. "I don't know that!" he cried, the classic line.
Sheldon's severe expression dissolved into something remarkably close to a smile. He leaned back in his chair, looking pleased with himself. "Got you. You're hired. We start now. Your first task is to organize the spectral data from the Fermi LAT archives. The files are on the server. Please try not to… wander off the point."
Raj was laughing, half in relief, half in sheer astonishment. "That… the whole thing was a bit? The questions? The… the serious face?"
"The position was never in doubt, Raj," Sheldon said, opening his laptop as if the emotional crescendo hadn't happened. "I needed a good researcher, and you are one. The 'interview' was… well, I thought you might appreciate the routine. It seemed kinder than just handing you a form to sign."
He glanced up, his gaze softening just a touch. "And it was, I'll admit, a little fun."
Raj understood. This was Sheldon's version of a bear hug. A job offer wrapped in a Python quote.
"Thank you, Sheldon. Really."
"You're welcome. Now, please, the emoting is raising the humidity in here. We have work to do."
As Raj floated out on a cloud of salvation, the dynamic in the apartment shifted again. With Howard increasingly absorbed in Bernadette, Penny working double shifts and quietly nursing her own hurt, and Raj now saved by and happily working with Sheldon, Leonard found himself at loose ends. He sat in the living room that evening. It was clean. It was quiet. Howard was on a date. Sheldon and Raj were at CalTech, no doubt solving the complexities of the universe.
Leonard was alone. The chaos Sheldon so often complained about was the glue that held their lives together. With it settling into new, separate patterns, he felt the walls of the apartment seemed farther apart, the silence between them deeper. He had fought for years to be free of Sheldon's rules. Now, in their absence, he felt oddly, profoundly, on the outside. The center was still there—it was in Sheldon's office, hiring a friend with a punchline—but Leonard was no longer sure where he stood in relation to it.