A/N: Hello hello! It's been a while. Here's a quick one-shot I thought of today and that took a lazy afternoon to write. I have to point out for the first time that this is not beta-ed and I'm not a native speaker, so I apologize for any mistake you might find.

Thank you koops for tweeting me something that sparked the idea for this one and to the lovely fandom members I have the pleasure to interact with. :)

The Casualty Improvisation

He wasn't able to tell what he was thinking to any living soul – nor that he wanted to, either – but Sheldon was beginning to realize and be sure of something: he had struggled with homesickness the same way he would have handled a flu. Badly.

And never a word had been this accurate. He had felt his guts twisting and turning inside of him, as much as that would have been physiologically impossible. It wasn't the feeling in itself that bothered him, necessarily (even though that was disturbing enough on its own), but coming to terms with what exactly he was missing, of what his brain connected to his idea of home. It wasn't Texas, it wasn't his busy-elsewhere-with-a-man mother, it wasn't his spot, it wasn't even Leonard like a year before – not the most, at least. He was missing Amy.

So what? would have been the common question of the equally common (and thus untrustable) man. Anyone who knew them well enough would have reminded him a series of things that made that feeling nothing more than a natural consequence. She was his girlfriend first and foremost, she was his Emergency Contact, they held hands, they hugged, they kissed, they–

Huh. So what.

He had wanted to get away from it all, leaving everything and everyone in statis, but starting from his own mind and body that kept betraying him step after step, the rest of the world didn't seem too favorable with that idea, either. And sometimes, in the strangest and unexpected of ways.

He came home as tired and disillusioned with his idealistic intent of giving himself time to think via travelling from train to train – in retrospect, where exactly did this quote unquote poetic idea came from? – to find his girlfriend lost in her own special flavour of personal drama, instead of worrying about his. How self-centered.

He came home and found Amy with a new haircut. Which, if Cosmo was to be trusted, would have been a sign of his girlfriend wanting to leave him and just considering that froze him in place for a split second. Or maybe, she willingly decided to change once again without wanting to break up to him, much to Sheldon's relief. Mixed with just a tiny bit of regret.

The backstory to that whole conundrum was in fact easier to swallow, but also carrying the scary thought that other people have their own way of intruding into your life without asking for permission to do so.

"I know what you're thinking" she started to explain as soon as she noticed the enquiring way in which he was staring at Penny's now very short hair when all his friends gathered at apartment 4A for dinner. "It's not her fault. Or anyone's fault, really." With that, she gave a tentative smile to Raj's girlfriend, who tentatively smiled back. "Emily has joined our social group and I was thinking of doing a fun activity to bond our relationship, just like Bernadette, Penny and I used to do when we met each other. Right?"

This time, a tentative smile came from the two blondes.

"I had amazing ideas" she continued "but they all insisted on going to Emily's hairdresser since she needed to freshen up her hair colour anyway and, as much as that uncreative but still acceptable way of spending time with your girlfriends, I had to oblige. I'm going to trust your ability to discern the rest of the story yourself, but I'll just point out that Crystal" Sheldon supposed that was the name of said hairdresser "was a bit liberal with the scissors."

"Or with hairspray and hairpins, in Bernadette's case" Penny laughed her way through her sentence, moving her hands in big circles around the other blonde's head.

From the little he knew about Emily, they could have all ended up with matching tattoos, so that was a relief in itself.

Long story short, some time had passed after that; Amy's hair had grown out yoctometer by yoctometer making it around the same length she had it when they first met, with the only addiction of (irritating) bangs that covered her eyebrows, making harder an already hard job for him: reading her facial expressions.

"There you go" Amy called him, handing him a cup of tea. "You went silent for a while" she said, sitting next to him on her couch for two.

"I was rebooting."

His attempt at a joke flew right over Amy's head as she was too focused on the one thing that drained everything else into oblivion during those casual days after his return and – he had to add – made her look like a mad woman, constantly blowing her hair out of her face, shaking her head, moving around like a possessed snake. And as much as the whole situation looked very familiar to him and he understood her woes, he... well, didn't he deserve attention as well? He even tried to get his moment by telling Emily with a consoling pat on her back: "You ruined my girlfriend's day to day life by second-handedly giving her something she didn't ask for, but I'm sure things will turn out just fine."

It served no other purpose than prompting another smile of the same variety the girls were exchanging during Amy's recollection of the story.

That, and he thought his girlfriend had better adaptational skills than his.

"Why don't you put it in place with a hair barrette?" he suggested. "I see you don't wear those anymore."

She brushed her bangs to the side with the hand that wasn't holding her own cup. "I tried it, but I can't see myself with a barrette holding my bangs in place, it looks like I have pineapple leaves in my hair" she commented casually. "I was used to the side part, I never wore my hair any other way. It's bad."

Pineapple leaves...?

"I'd say it's new, not bad. Get used to it."

"From the way you deadpanned through your sentence, I can tell you don't grasp the irony of what you just said" she answered, looking at the smoke rising from the tea.

"Very funny" he said with a fake smile.

Amy had a frown so clear on her face that Sheldon didn't even need the visual aid of her eyebrows to understand it. He looked on as they both drank their hot beverages.

"What exactly did you mean by pineapple leaves, anyway?" he asked.

"Well..." she hesitated.

"Guess I'll see for myself" he thought out loud. He got up from the couch and went straight to the bathroom; he came back around thirty seconds later holding a barrette in his hand.

She looked at his hand, then at his face, then back at his hand. "Sheldon..."

"How about an experiment?" he proposed.

"It's a failed one" she sighed.

"A failed one according to you."

Amy opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out quick enough. She finally answered: "Fine."

Placing her cup on the coffee table close to the one his boyfriend had put down moments before, she straightened up in place and turned to face him. He got close enough that one of his knees was brushing against the fabric of her skirt.

Sheldon considered how to go at it and he realized that he had no theoretical nor practical knowledge of dealing with bangs. What to do?

He opened the barrette with one hand while the other was busy collecting all the pieces of hair that were trying to escape his gentle grasp. He tried doing what felt the right course of action and turned the bangs upside down and above her face, trying to end it all so quickly that he sticked the pointy end of the barrette in her head.

"Ow!"

"Sorry" he mumbled under his breath.

As it turned out, second try was the charm.

And... Amy was right. He had to pin them in place so close to the root that they were standing up on their own. Just like little pineapple leaves.

"Well, I like pineapples anyway" Sheldon pointed out matter of factly.

She smiled. "It'll grow out eventually, right?"

"At least you're not having a mental breakdown over it" he simply said.