A week had passed into our winter break. Georgie and I were out in the garage most days now even if we were not working, though I'd eased off the pace quite a bit, just chilling and putting in a few hours here and there rather than grinding through it like before. This particular weekend was a slow one for me, low-key by design. I was enjoying my break.
Loud rock music blared out of the speakers we'd bought for the garage, the kind of stuff that was apparently huge right now, though it never really did much for me one way or another. I leaned more toward blues myself, but today was Georgie's turn to pick the soundtrack, so I just had to sit there and take it.
We'd agreed early on that the speakers counted as a legitimate work expense, along with the mini fridge we'd installed for keeping sodas cold while we worked. Between the music, the fridge, and the general mess of tools scattered everywhere, the garage had turned into our space now.
Even on afternoons when neither of us didn't want to work, we'd still end up out there just hanging around. Kevin and Helen swung by every so often too, usually with nothing better to do themselves.
My bike was almost road ready by this point. I'd already fixed the ignition coil using Repair and Restore, and it ran clean again without a hitch. Since this one was going to be mine and mine alone, I wasn't holding back on using the skill however much I wanted. I'd been taking my time with a handful of extra touches I had in mind, wanting it to come out exactly right rather than rushing through it.
I'd swapped the stock tires for a wider, thicker set built for better grip on the road, something that ran close to eighty dollars a pair. It was looking much cooler with wide tires.
Beyond that, I'd welded on a custom set of foot pegs and a small rear luggage rack myself, along with reinforcing the kickstand mount, which had been looking a little worn before I got to it. A little more of my own touches. All that was left now was the paint job, and it'd be ready well before Christmas.
Georgie, meanwhile, was doing genuinely great work on the C10 by himself, exceeding my expectations. He only needed a nudge here and there to spot what was actually wrong, and from there he'd work through the fix entirely on his own.
It hit me somewhere in the middle of watching him that Georgie learned best with his hands actually on something, not sitting behind a desk. He wasn't dumb, like people assumed. He had his own strengths.
"This thing's gonna look fire once it's done," Georgie said, cracking open a bottle of Dr Pepper.
"Course it will. It's my baby," I said, smirking, more than a little proud of the bike sitting between us.
"Our baby, you mean," Georgie said, not even realising how gay he sounded.
"No and Don't ever say that again. It's mine. Go find your own," I said, matter-of-fact about it. I'd let him ride it now and then, sure, but ownership stayed with me.
Every man deserves one thing that's entirely his, and a good bike felt like exactly that kind of thing. Some stuff just wasn't meant to be shared.
"Asshole," Georgie muttered, though he'd known that was coming from the start, so he didn't bother arguing the point any further.
"Let's take a break. It's almost lunchtime anyway," I said, wiping my hands off on a rag.
When I got inside, I found Sheldon lying face down on the couch, completely still.
"What's wrong with him?" Georgie asked, right as Dad walked in behind us and spotted Sheldon too, worry flickering across his face. At least the ulcer itself was under control these days.
"Those NASA people still haven't responded to his science stuff," Mom said, coming in from the kitchen to fill Dad in. Sheldon had actually stopped bringing it up to me directly a while back, which I'd assumed meant he'd let it go. Apparently not. He'd just stopped talking about it out loud, which somehow felt worse.
According to Mom, he'd taken to watching for the mailman every single day, practically snatching the mail out of the man's hands before he even got a chance to ring the bell. That was sad.
"Damn it, I've had enough of this. Sheldon, get up," Dad said.
"What's the point?" Sheldon mumbled into the couch cushion.
"We're going to Houston," Dad said.
"Really?" Sheldon perked up instantly, hope creeping into his voice.
"We're gonna go give those space monkeys a little talking to," Dad said, and Sheldon broke into the widest smile I'd seen on him in weeks. Dad always had a way of setting things right when it actually mattered.
"Good luck, Sheldon. Make those monkeys cry," I told him, genuinely happy to see him perk up like that.
"What do you mean? You're coming with us. You're my co-author," Sheldon said, confused.
"No, I've got things to do," I told him, mostly because I had zero interest in driving all the way to Houston in this kind of cold.
My protest didn't hold up for long, though. Mom talked me into it without much effort, and honestly, I couldn't say no once I actually looked at Sheldon's face, lit up like that after so long without a single real smile. He didn't show that kind of emotion often, and I wasn't about to be the reason it disappeared again. I sighed and went to grab my coat.
______
All six of us piled into Mom's station wagon and hit the road toward the NASA center in Houston. Mom, Dad, and Missy took the front, while Sheldon, Georgie, and I got stuffed into the back seat together.
"I don't get why I even have to be here. Me and Missy got no reason to be there," Georgie said.
"Wasn't gonna suffer through this alone," I whispered to him, since I was the one who'd talked Mom into turning this into a full family outing in the first place.
"Because we're having a fun family outing," Mom said cheerfully from the front seat.
"Can I at least drive?" Georgie tried his luck.
"No," Mom said simply, leaving zero room for negotiation.
"Trying to end my whole bloodline in one car, I see," Dad said, joking, glancing back at all of us crammed together.
"Let's stop at the ostrich farm," Missy said, staring out the window at the passing fields.
"Cool, we could ride 'em, then eat 'em after," Georgie said.
"Maybe we just leave you there with them instead," I said.
"Sheldon, you doing alright back there?" Mom asked, noticing how quiet he'd gone.
"I think I'm gonna be car sick," Sheldon said, going a shade paler by the second.
"Should we pull over?" Mom asked, but one look at him told me we weren't going to make it that far in time.
"Georgie! Open the window!" I shouted, grabbing Sheldon by the shoulders and hauling him bodily across Georgie's lap to get his head out into open air just as he lost his lunch, the car still rolling down the highway the whole time. Somehow we avoided getting any of it on the upholstery, or on my clothes, I didn't want to smell like vomit the whole day.
"That was a close one," Missy said, clearly entertained by the whole chaotic scene unfolding beside her.
Dad pulled over shortly after, letting Sheldon finish up properly on the side of the road while Mom dug through her bag of Sheldon essentials for something to settle his stomach.
_______
We finally reached the NASA center in Houston, and I'll admit the place left me a little stunned. It was an impressive setup, but we ended up cooling our heels in the waiting area for close to an hour while the receptionist kept insisting Dr. Ronald wasn't quite ready to see us yet.
I kept Missy entertained through most of it, a few rounds of tic-tac-toe scratched onto the back of an old magazine. I even let her beat me in thumbs war. She was proud of that.
Dad had called ahead to set up this whole appointment, but they didn't even pick up the phone and getting stonewalled after driving all this way clearly wasn't sitting well with him.
"So what exactly are we supposed to do now?" Mom asked, sipping at a cup of coffee from the vending machine.
"Guess we just gotta be patient and... Ah, SCREW IT!," Dad said, and marched straight past the receptionist's desk toward the office door, ignoring her protests entirely as he shoved his way inside. I could still hear him clearly through the closed door.
"Here's the deal," Dad said, his voice dropping into that low, intimidating register he rarely used. "My kid's got himself a damn ulcer because of you people. So either you start taking my boys seriously, or you start taking me seriously instead."
Whoever was on the other end of that conversation had to be sweating bullets by now. I felt a small surge of pride listening to him lay it out like that.
"Janice, why don't you go ahead and let the boys in," Dr. Ronald's voice came through from the speaker on the receptionist's phone.
"He'll see you now," the receptionist said, smiling nervously at us.
Sheldon and I walked in together, Sheldon holding his head high, notebook tucked firmly under one arm.
Dr. Ronald looked genuinely surprised to see the two of us standing there. It seemed he remembered who we were or he was just surprised to see how young we both were.
"Nice to meet you again, Dr. Ronald. Hope my dad wasn't too friendly with you just now," I said, and he shook my hand a little nervously, then Sheldon's, still visibly rattled.
I settled into one of the chairs after pulling an interesting-looking book off his shelf, which seemed to throw him off even further.
"Don't mind me. Sheldon's the one doing the talking today," I told him, while Sheldon was already dragging a stool over to the whiteboard, chalk in hand.
Sheldon launched into his explanation, and I could tell from Dr. Ronald's expression that he'd walked in expecting to find some obvious flaw to dismiss us with. Instead, his face shifted, slowly, into something a lot more attentive as Sheldon kept going.
"Near the apogee, we gimbal the engine to exert a torque that flips the rocket over by a hundred and eighty degrees," Sheldon finished, setting the chalk down.
"Sheldon, this is brilliant. You worked all this out yourself?" Dr. Ronald asked, standing up to study the board more closely.
"Me and Charlie," Sheldon said.
"You kids, this is genuinely groundbreaking work," Dr. Ronald said.
"Thank you. And..." Sheldon said, popping a Zantac into his mouth.
"And?" Dr. Ronald asked.
"I thought you might want to apologize."
"For what?"
"You tried to shut me up with a patch."
Of course he wasn't letting that one go. Honestly, that had been the whole point of this trip from the start.
"I hand those out to everyone. But I'm sorry if it came across wrong," Dr. Ronald finally said, giving Sheldon the exact words he'd been waiting weeks to hear.
"You have to understand, Sheldon, while this work is impressive, we don't currently have the capability to actually build it," Dr. Ronald added. I'd already known that part going in, but that was never really the point of today.
"Fair enough. We're ahead of our time. I know that much," I said, finally closing the book I just finished reading.
"But here's the real question," I said, getting straight to business. "We've already filed a patent on this. What we want to know is whether NASA has any interest in doing something with it down the line."
I knew this wasn't going to make me any money in the short term, but if this research ended up published in a respected journal somewhere, it could fast-track my whole academic career toward a doctorate eventually.
"I'll need to run this by some people above me," Dr. Ronald said, while Sheldon had already wandered outside, mission accomplished.
"Here's our home number. Hang onto the notebook and think it over," I told him, confident that sooner or later, someone from that office would be reaching back out.
The second I stepped outside, Missy came running over and threw her arms around me.
"Big brother, when you get rich, don't forget to buy me dresses and jewelry," she said, out of nowhere. It turned out Dad had told Georgie and Missy earlier that Sheldon and I might end up famous someday, and that they'd better stay on our good side if they wanted to be taken care of down the road. Missy, apparently, had decided Sheldon was a lost cause on the charm front, so she'd latched onto me instead.
I looked over at Georgie. "I'm not hugging you."
We all laughed, tired but in a good way, and piled back into the station wagon for the drive home. The trip itself dragged on a while, but it wasn't a bad kind of tired. We stopped for ostrich burgers along the way, which turned out to be pretty bad.
On the drive back, close to home, Sheldon suddenly spoke up.
"Dad. Thanks for today," he said.
Mom shot Dad a warm, happy-wife kind of smile, and even from behind him, I was pretty sure Dad was smiling too.
"We're proud of you both. Shelly and Charlie," Mom said on his behalf, since Dad clearly wasn't going to say something like that out loud himself. Classic old-school macho man.
"What about me and Georgie? You proud of us too?" Missy asked.
"Of course," Mom said instantly.
"As much as Charlie and Sheldon?" Georgie pressed.
"Don't push it. You already know who the favorites are," Sheldon said, and I couldn't help laughing at that.
Dad laughed too, clearly amused. It had been a long, exhausting day all around, and I slept like a rock that night.
___________
AN: What should be the next gacha. It is still a few chapters away but any suggestions?