*A/n Hey guys, happy Friday! Time to partayy *party dance*
Let me know if I should continue/if it's complete crapp?
I hope you enjoy this though, and I will see you soon :D
Summary: Another high school au fic, Sheldon and Amy are super smart rivals, head to head for top of the class. But will Sheldon have more social skills due to something Amy can't control? Will they still find a way to work?
Sheldon sat neatly in his seat with perfect posture and a smug expression. His stomach was nearly flush against his wooden desk, leaning forward as if he were actually interested in seeing what he got on the most recent test, even though he already knew. The teacher, a man covered in scruff and slow paced, moved through the room as if he had all day, passing back each individual test by slapping the packets face down on the children's desks. The process was so slow Sheldon grew bored of watching.
Times like this he found his eyes sliding two rows over to glance at a girl he'd never spoken to, nor ever heard speak in general. She would look back at him sometimes, green eyes glinting back at him innocently and a small smile tugging at her lips in a shy fashion. Other times she wouldn't meet his gaze at all and kept her own hidden the whole period. He noticed how she wore a different sweater everyday, stitches sloppy but otherwise they looked very comfortable. Sheldon would sometimes catch her wrapping her fingers loosely around the fabric, or playing with her hair as casually as possible.
Another thing about this girl was that her name always appeared on the board beside his, the one indicating which students had gotten perfect scores on certain tests and projects. Without a doubt he knew her place on the board was secure, even though he didn't know her personally he could tell just how smart she was, and if he was honest, he was slightly envious.
Sheldon's head snapped back up as his teacher yelped in a high pitched tone; he was not very skilled at walking, or, rather wandering around the room, and talking or teaching at the same time, and so tripped abruptly. As he regained his composed stature Sheldon let his mind wander further to the girl and he wondered if she, too, had a photographic memory, or if she was just lucky.
The other kids in their class were always scoffing by the fact that the same two people always got perfect scores on the tests, to which Sheldon always shrugged. He didn't mind the attention really, thrived on it in fact, but didn't know how it affected Amy Farrah Fowler. Nobody knew how anything affected her, she never said a word.
Though he wondered why, he wasn't given the time to sit and analyze it, as the bell rang to signal the end of the class. Sheldon watched as the teacher threw his hands up in defeat, mumbling that he and Amy, once again, had both gotten one hundreds and everyone else basically failed. Sheldon was almost tempted to chuckle at his classmate's stupidity, but fell silent as he watched Amy gather her things, rise from her chair and leave silently.
It was nothing new, really. She did the same thing everyday, just today, he paid more attention. He left silently as well, though that was due to the fact that he had no friends in the class. He wondered if Amy was in the same position, or if she had no friends in particular.
He decided to ask her during lunch, exiting the room lastly and striding quickly to his second class of the day.
#
When the time came, Sheldon found it may be slightly difficult to slip away from his group of friends to talk to this girl. His three friends had nothing against her, really, but already found him odd enough and who knew what they would say if he were to try and talk to her.
His best friend Leonard peered at him from across the table, his black glasses sliding down his nose slightly. He looked paler than usual, and more tired, perhaps, though Sheldon wasn't really paying attention. He also wasn't listening to the intense conversation his Indian friend Raj was having with his other friend Howard at their table, for if he had, he would have joined in because Batman was definitely better than Superman, hands down.
Sheldon found his mind had been wandering a lot that day, he didn't know why. It's not like it was his first time seeing Amy in class, the year was nearly half over and he'd encountered her plenty. He knew for a fact that she did just as well in her classes as he did, and at first, more often than not, just found himself staring her down.
He used to dislike her, very, very much. He used to think she was somehow cheating, nobody could be as smart, if not more so, than he was. He always considered himself the best. Perhaps he thought this to simply push other thoughts to the back of his mind, particularly the ones in which he took pride that he knew such a smart girl, impressed with her intelligence and quite mesmerized by how she did it all.
Now, he more or less felt indifferent about the whole thing. Sheldon remembered scrambling for tests at the beginning of the year, determined not to let anyone do better than him or show him up. He remembered pulling a blank expression each and every time her score matched his, and catching the small smirk she held as she looked at him after they'd just gotten their results.
That smirk was gone over time, however. Though Amy seemed less confident in her ability, less outgoing and the like, she never ceased to show him how smart she really was.
Thinking about it made Sheldon realize how reserved Leonard had become in comparison over the months. His best friend seemed more nervous than anything, though maybe that's just how all teenagers seemed. Presently, his best friend was talking so much and in such a hasty manner that his sentences were running together, and he had to pull out his inhaler to make his words seem clearer.
At that point Sheldon quietly excused himself from the table. All his friends stopped talking and watched him as he walked over to the trash can, throwing his half eaten lunch away and instead of turning back, kept walking.
With his Vulcan hearing he heard their puzzled questions and theories, but ignored them the closer he got to her table. She was sitting there with her head buried in a book, no lunch and backpack hidden beneath the table. Her sweater of the day had comforting orange stripes on it, though Sheldon thought it would look better with a little koala printed right in the middle.
He plopped down next to her carefully, pulling his legs over the bench and sitting so his back was strait, as always. Though she didn't look up, he could almost feel her gaze freeze on the line she was reading. Her fingers again wrapped around her sweater sleeve, disappearing into it as she simply refused to move.
He tried to sound cheerful, as well, figuring she may need a light in her day, and, well, everyone pretty much loved him. He kept a genuine smile plastered on his face, an appropriate distance from her, watching her carefully. Finally, after what seemed like far too long, she brought those soft green eyes to his. In the light they almost appeared shiny.
"What are you reading?" he asked in a somewhat awkward fashion. In all honesty he was terrible at holding conversations with people he just met, and shifted on the bench, slightly uncomfortable.
Under the table, Amy placed her finger on the page she was reading and flipped to the cover. Sheldon read it wordlessly, nodding and willing himself to smile to hopefully make her feel more relaxed and comfortable around him.
"I'm not surprised you like reading actual books, though I couldn't say that for any other girl. I heard they're all obsessed with this thing called fanfiction..."
Amy, a strand of hair danging in front of her face, cocked an eyebrow at him in confusion, or maybe she was amused by this, he couldn't tell.
"Surely you know what that is, right?" he asked after a moment of silence, and like he'd seen her do many times before, she hung her head and shook it slowly. Had he not felt so awkward in that moment, maybe he would have focused more on the sympathy he felt towards her in that moment.
He didn't know what to say in response to this. She seemed to be studying her hands carefully, or maybe noting how close their hands were.
For all he knew, she could have actually been staring at his crotch. He hoped that wasn't the case.
For Amy, however, the encounter was literally terrifying. She dreaded when anyone would talk to her, feeling sorry for anyone who expected an answer she simply couldn't give. This wasn't her choice by a long shot, it was just how things were.
She couldn't exactly tell him she'd never reply to him, or that he should just go. They were pretty much stuck like that until he decided to get up and move, which, in all honesty she hoped he would. He could be talking to somebody much better than she was, for lack of a better term. Literally anyone would do, every single soul was less pathetic and worthless than she was.
The boy next to her, which she knew to be Sheldon Cooper, didn't look to be in any hurry to leave her alone for the rest of lunch. Didn't he have other friends he could talk to? She decided to carry on as she normally would, pulling out her notes with small, slow movements and acting as if she were studying them.
Sheldon looked over her shoulder as she did this, however. He tried to do it discretely, succeeding in every way possible and only coming off as slightly creepy. Amy wouldn't say anything though, not that she could. Maybe if she just tried to ignore him...
Eventually their free time had come to a conclusion. As the tall man in the middle of the room, holding a bullhorn to his lips, dismissed them all, crowds of people started scattering in the hallways and Amy stood up, not looking back as she walked away from Sheldon and to her next class.
#
Sheldon's attempts at communication were only slightly discouraged after lunch that day. He had no other classes with Amy, which was a slight drag, as no other student put up as much of a competition as she did, even if she never did speak.
Still, he found himself intrigued by the fact that this was the case. Being the teenage boy he was, though, he let the thought go and didn't come back to it for quite some time.
It was about a week later when his brain had come full circle and he began to focus on Amy again. If he was true to himself, he often got very distracted with small, trivial things about people, forgetting important anniversaries and dates with friends, mainly only Leonard and Raj, but occasionally Howard too. They were the only companions he really had, but as the days sped by, he couldn't help but grow closer to the concerning thought that maybe, just maybe, Amy had no one.
And he had no idea how to fix this if she would never talk to him.
So after another day of sitting in a class and stealing glancing at the girl who never looked up, fiddled with her sweater and now had taken it upon herself to start writing in her notebook more often than not, he walked out of the school at the end of the day with a clouded mind.
The sidewalks were clear that day, nobody else occupied the walkways and that left silence to surround him. He found himself wondering briefly if Amy paid attention to those kinds of things, before his train of thought jumped back to video games and the joke Leonard made about him earlier that hurt his feelings and how, like usual, he hadn't said anything. Maybe he should have, but why risk probably the best friendship he would ever have over something stupid like that? His feeling weren't valid in his mind, though a nagging voice in the back of his mind told him Amy's did.
He almost didn't believe it.
Sheldon had a pretty good guess as to what advice Meemaw would give him when he got home in a short ten minutes. He pictured himself walking in the door, going outside with her and sitting in the humid air of Texas while he explained the situation to her in detail. He imagined she'd say something along the lines of trying to talk to her a different way, if that's what he really wanted, but he wanted to hear her say it.
So he ran the rest of the way home, as fast as his long legs would carry him with his backpack bouncing behind him and smacking him with every step. He didn't care, he simply had to get home and talk to Meemaw and get his thoughts sorted out, because they'd never really revolved around a girl before.
And if he let them consume him, and she got a better score than him on the next test, he'd never be able to forgive himself.
#
The next morning was a Friday, and Amy breathed a silent sigh of relief. She stretched in her bed, a small smile on her lips as she heard the birds outside her window sing their beautiful melodies just for her. Her mother told her that the birds would sing for her when she couldn't and comfort her every morning with their chirps. She lived her life this way, the blue feathery creatures making her days a little easier to handle.
Her shirt had ridden up slightly in her sleep, she realized, as she sat up properly. In her room she rarely wore her sweaters, the only place she felt comfortable in just a t-shirt. She almost always had a blanket wrapped around her though, as she was seemingly always freezing. Last night had been one of those nights where she wore a t shirt that fit her nicely and black shorts to match, but those would never do for a school day.
Amy searched for a moment before finding a red striped sweater for the day, a fading color that was pale in comparison to most ones she wore. She smiled as she slipped inside it though, quietly stepping down the flight of stairs to her kitchen for a glass of water.
She knew it wasn't the healthiest of things, to get back into an old habit the way she was doing. Her mother sometimes glanced at her worriedly, stating water wasn't a meal, but Amy always shrugged. If she could, she'd say she simply wasn't hungry, or maybe fib and say she'd eat at school. She always took the food her mom offered her in the morning, simply to ease her nerves, though every morning at school she'd give whatever snack she'd been given to the nearest trashcan to swallow whole.
This morning she silently willed her mother not to find her in the kitchen. Though it was a Friday, she still did not want to put up with people, but knew she'd have to eventually. To her dismay as soon as she reached the living room carpet her mom appeared out of the shadows and gave her a fleeting look of cheer, holding out a paper bag which, no doubt, contained the lunch she would be forced to take to school that day.
"I made this for you," she said, her smile returning momentarily as she handed her daughter the sack. It felt cool to the touch, making Amy momentarily curious as to what was inside it, and then she remembered she didn't care in the slightest.
While Amy stuffed the food into her backpack her mother continued to talk, sitting down on the couch and putting her feet up on the opposite end.
"Your cousins are going to stay over this weekend." she mentioned amidst the rambling, and Amy fought the urge to freeze up completely. It wasn't so much that she hated her cousins... but nobody in her family understood. At times she thought her mom didn't either, and that she was alone in this world. Her cousins wouldn't even try to understand, they may even get angry at her.
The thought was purely terrifying.
Amy pursed her lips however and continued rearranging her bag, even though she had already finished. She just needed something to keep her hands busy, as she didn't have to leave for school for another ten minutes.
Her mother kept talking and the voice droned on, gradually growing louder and more irritating in Amy's mind.
"I thought we could take you kids out to dinner, maybe get our hair done..."
Nodding along, Amy slung her purple back pack over her shoulder, silently staring at her mom and wishing she could tell her to just shut up, no matter how rude it may have seemed. When their eyes met briefly, her mother smiled innocently, apologetically, and called after her daughter to have a good day, though she was already out the door and on her way, exactly four minutes earlier than planned.
#
There was absolutely nothing wrong with words of affirmation, Meemaw's words echoed in his brain. Sheldon kept telling himself that, note after note he scribbled and scrawled, until finally he found one he was satisfied with. As he walked into class that day he was prepared to give it to Amy, watch as her thin lips tugged into the smile he loved so much. She wasn't in her usual seat, however. Nowhere to be seen.
He was slightly surprised she'd chosen to miss the test that day, but shrugged it off as he folded the note carefully and placed in in his pocket. As usual, he finished the test fairly quickly, ending up with more down time than he knew what to do with, and sighed as he walked back to his desk slowly. Without thinking he turned back around, quietly asking the teacher if he could use the restroom, to which the teacher simply shooed him off.
Taking his answer as a positive one, Sheldon walked out wordlessly. The paper in his pocket crinkled as he ran his finger over it, making his way to the boy's bathroom.
He was sure as he was almost two feet from it, though, he saw a flash of a familiar red before it disappeared into the girl's bathroom, and he waited there for a while, anticipating whoever went in there to come out momentarily, but eventually the wait became too long and he abandoned the action so he could relieve himself.
As he was doing so, he carefully heard the squeak of loose converse on the school's tiled floor right around the corner, and he couldn't help but wonder if whoever it was that had walked past, had been trying to ignore him.
#
When he got home that day, Sheldon went to Meemaw and told her how Amy had not been in school. He left out a lot of details about his day, but as long as he said something he found his family didn't chide him as much for small things that happened to him.
In response to this new information Meemaw's small smile she'd been supporting dropped sightly. As Sheldon previously stated, it wasn't like Amy to miss school, especially on a test day, and both were sat in rocking chairs talking about this girl they hardly knew, because Sheldon hadn't gotten the chance to give her the note he'd written.
And he thought it was pretty good as well.
He walked to his room after talking to his grandmother for a while to place the paper, crinkled and imperfect, on his dresser so he wouldn't forget it when he went to bring it to school on Monday.
The rest of the day passed without another mention of Amy, and for a moment Sheldon almost forgot there might have been someone out there who had it worse than him. It was hard enough for him to deal with the constant teasing his siblings gave him, his father's addiction and mother's obsession with all things religious. There really was no escape, and at those times he wished he was given another test to take, that way he could get a perfect score and people would pay attention to him more in a way that wasn't threatening or neglectful.
#
Another Sunday rolled around before Amy looked at the writing she'd started that past Friday. She'd been curious after Sheldon mentioned fanfiction to her, so decided to find out what it was and was practicing writing one when there was a soft rap at her bedroom door, which happened to be ajar already.
She glanced up tiredly, wondering if her cousins were finally gone. It took all her strength not to break down in tears while they visited or get too angry as they were young and pointed out the obvious, but somehow she'd managed to live and see her mother standing before her, an equally exhausted expression on her face, though she appeared slightly more calm and at ease.
"What would you like for dinner?" she asked hopefully, and Amy stared at her wide eyed. Did he mother not understand? She couldn't have asked her a simple yes or no question, could she? Amy shook her head anyway. She hadn't eaten in weeks, not that she could tell anyone. It didn't matter, she wasn't hungry and hoped, by not paying attention to her mom, she would just go away, but to no avail.
The woman sat down next to her on the bed, rubbing her back slowly. "Are you okay, honey?" she asked, making Amy roll her eyes. Of course she wasn't okay, her mother wouldn't understand though. She shook her head.
"Could you at least try talking for me?"
Amy wanted to point how the doctors told them years ago it was impossible, and she should just let it go, but shook her head once more and focused as much as she could on the writing in her lap, her mother sneaking glances at it until finally, Amy buried it under the sleeves of her sweater, a pink tint to her cheeks.
"Who's this Sheldon you're writing about, hmm?" her mother asked, smiling and poking her daughters hands away, though she wouldn't budge. Amy wasn't about to admit that the tall, awkward boy had been the inspiration for her first writing piece.
Sometimes she was glad she couldn't say anything, that way she couldn't let anything slip.
#
Sheldon decided to walk to school on Monday, he'd done so enough that he knew the route by heart and skipped down it while eating his bagel, thankful nobody was watching. Usually he wasn't so carefree about the way he behaved, but that morning his mom and Meemaw had given him a pep talk, and he sincerely hoped they were right about Amy being back at school that day.
He was generally excited to see her again, and give her the note he'd worked so hard to perfect.
As he walked into his morning class his eyes immediately fell to Amy's currently occupied seat. He smiled to himself as he saw her, clad in yet another, purple sweater, and her hair slightly curled. He walked over to her casually, not sure why his heart skipped a beat when she brought her shimmering green eyes to his in mild surprise.
Wordlessly he placed the note on her desk, letting his hand linger for slightly longer than he should have. Soon after class started Sheldon took his own seat, desperately focusing on not looking at her too soon, but so curious about her reaction to the note that it made him itch with anticipation.
In truth, Amy didn't believe the note much, though she appreciated the gesture. For a brief moment she wished she could tell him that, and spent the majority of her class time forming words on her notepad of how to tell him in a way that would make sense. By the time class was over, before she could even get up Sheldon bounded over to her, a nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach that was reflected in the smile he gave her.
"What did you think?"
He sounded almost like a child wanting praise on the work he'd done. Amy shrugged, attempting a smile and slid her notebook to him, one of her failed writings on it that read "Thank you for the gesture" in scratched handwriting surrounded in poorly drawn doodles.
Sheldon stared down at it for a moment, before whispering to himself "That's all?" though not aware he had done it.
Amy looked way guiltily, feeling bad for putting him down in such a way. It made her want to hit herself for hurting the only person who had been remotely friendly to her, but mostly it made her just feel mean. She tried to keep a strait face though, and thankfully their conversation was interrupted by the teacher calling her to the front of the room.
Sheldon drug his feet into the hallway with his head hung, staring at the floor. Meemaw had been wrong, yes, but he had been right.
There was definitely more about this girl than he knew, probably more than he would ever know. It was all he had in him to decide to give it one more shot at lunch that same day, hoping things went a little differently, though truthfully not knowing what to expect at all.