AN: Wow! Such a great response from the first chapter I just had to hurry and get this next one posted ahead of schedule. To the reviewers who I can't respond to personally, thanks.
As time was wont to do, it passed more quickly when one most wanted to prolong the inevitable or, in Amy's case, the unavoidable conversation she resolved on having with Sheldon. She parked her car in the lot at 2311 Los Robles and sent Sheldon a quick text informing him she was downstairs. She did not wonder what it would be like to have a normal boyfriend who would pick her up for date night in his car as many other girls might have. In truth, she liked driving Sheldon. When he always went to Leonard and Penny during a crisis, it made her feel superfluous. Driving Sheldon made her feel needed. And while the others might be annoyed by Sheldon's criticism of their driving and incessant need for car games, Amy liked them. It was just one of the many venues Sheldon exhibited his intelligence and Amy enjoyed that side of him. Regardless of what the others might say, she enjoyed the intellectual stimulation of the games as well. They made her feel close to him.
"You shouldn't leave your doors unlocked like that, Amy," Sheldon scolded as he settled his long legs into the passenger seat and his lithe body followed. "What if I was going to harm you?"
Amy rolled her eyes at Sheldon's need for safety precautions. It was endearing that he cared about her safety though.
"But you aren't going to harm me, Sheldon," she reminded him with a smile as she turned the key in the ignition. She felt the engine hum to life.
"I could have been someone else," Sheldon argued with her.
Amy felt her body tingle to life at the thought of another debate with Sheldon. The others disliked Sheldon's condescending, know-it-all attitude. Amy loved giving as good as she got. She would never let on as much to Sheldon for fear of him running away, but their intellectual debates were arousing.
"But you weren't so your case is moot. Now where am I going?" she asked him.
"Right," Sheldon answered. Leave it to Sheldon to not tell her the name of the restaurant but to navigate her step by step as he always did. Him and his need to show off his eidetic memory more likely.
They played the element game—easier than counterfactuals and therefore more suitable for the car where she did not need as much concentration and could instead focus on the road and Sheldon's intoxicating scent, not that she would ever admit how much she loved the way he smelt like talc. That was yet another to send him running away from her.
He chose an Italian restaurant. He briefly tried to argue with the maître d' about the inefficiency of making a reservation for 7:00pm if their table was not going to be ready until 7:10pm, and Amy had the forethought to distract him from his increasingly agitated argument before he got them kicked out of the restaurant entirely.
She ordered ravioli and Sheldon spaghetti. They ate with comfortable conversation, and Amy fidgeted once their plates were cleared away. She knew what she had to say.
"There's something I've been meaning to talk to you about," Amy finally summoned her courage.
"Oh!" Sheldon seemed surprised, and then a knowing smile crossed his face. "You mean about missing lunch on Tuesday. That's okay. Just don't miss lunch again, little lady. You know how much I like my schedules."
Amy smiled at him. When he said childish things such as that, which would make a normal person infuriated, she felt her heart clench with the burst of affection she felt. Her boyfriend was both handsome and boyishly adorable. If only he wanted to touch her more, she would be the luckiest girl in the world.
"I know you do," Amy agreed, "but that's not what I wanted to talk to you about, Sheldon."
Sheldon seemed taken aback, surprised his enormous intellect failed to anticipate her words.
"Actually, I wanted to talk to you about children."
"Children?" For all his intelligence, Sheldon truly could be clueless. "Germ-infested, loud, chaotic little things. I don't like children, Amy. Why do we have to talk about them?" Sheldon whined.
And that right there was why she had not brought up her concern about children before. Somewhere deep down she knew she would be rebuffed if she did. He disliked children. She wanted a child, and not in the sense that she wanted children sometime in the future or even in the next few years. She wanted a child now. She had a stable career, enough income to support a child, and she was on track to gaining recognition in her field. She had a steady boyfriend of almost five years, and if she was honest with herself, she could not see herself with anyone else but him. Perhaps she would even win a Nobel Prize some day. Her biological clock was ticking and she was running out of time.
Sheldon hated children? He seemed okay with the idea of a test tube baby grown in a surrogate as a way to gift the world with his progeny. He was also eager to have Martian babies with her, but Amy wasn't willing to wait for the off-chance that they might be chosen to go to Mars. The truth was that when it came to Sheldon, he was never ready, always dragging his feet leaps and bounds behind her, reluctantly progressing but never really wanting to. He could not possibly want children.
"Never mind, Sheldon," Amy said. She tried and failed to keep her dejection at bay, but in his typical manner Sheldon either failed to recognize what she felt or choose simply to ignore it and focus on what he wanted instead.
"Good. Because I was thinking we could go to the train store after. There's a . . ."
Sheldon kept talking but Amy couldn't focus on his words. The train store? That's what he wanted to talk about? Here she was trying to discuss whether children would be a possibility in their future and he would rather focus on silly toys that a grown man really shouldn't still be playing with. His talc made him smell like a baby powder. He often acted like a toddler. Most of the time, Amy found his scent undeniably sexy. Tonight, it just served to remind her of the future children she would never have if she stayed with Sheldon.
If. That was right. Her mind had know for awhile she'd have to make this decision. Short of some type of apocalypse, Sheldon would not want children. She loved him, but was that love strong enough to get her through a lifetime without them? More to the point, would she wish for a life with Sheldon when it meant she would watch their friends have children someday but never her? And, even more hurtful, did he even want a life with her? After almost five years together they had nothing more to show of it than a handful of kisses and reluctant cuddling. No coitus. Would Sheldon ever want her that way? Would he even want her in his life forever? So far, he balked at the thought of them living together even though they dated for five years. He even ran away because the thought of living with her was too scary for him to contemplate. Would that be her fate if she stayed with him? For him to forever live with Leonard and Penny as she went home to her apartment alone and childless for the rest of her life. Would he ever want to get married?
Marriage. Children. Those weren't just things that she wanted. She needed them in a way she never would have anticipated. And it was time for her to open her eyes to the truth that Sheldon did not want them and likely never would. Worse, she knew she did not want to marry Sheldon if it meant she had to force him to the altar. She did not want to force him to have children he'd resent. She and Sheldon were both brilliant, and while genetics was a factor in intelligence—as a neurobiologist Amy knew a lot about that topic—it was not everything. What if their children were not as intelligent as Sheldon and her? Would he still want the child? Still love the child? Or would he reject them outright?
That was even worse. And yet as much as she feared Sheldon would never want to have what she needed, she loved him too much. The thought of marriage and children with a faceless stranger was as unappealing to her as a lifetime of the limbo she was currently in.
Perhaps he needed time. She'd try again in a few days. She'd talk to Penny. Her blonde bestie understood Sheldon in a different way than she did. As much as everyone criticized Penny for not being as educated as the rest of them, she was smart in her own way. She could hold her liquor and she had street smarts. She could fix things when they were broken and, despite all her own personal failures, she was great with relationships. Penny understood things about human behavior her more 'intelligent' friends did not. Penny might have some insight onto how to deal with Sheldon.
"—Amy." Amy was startled out of her thoughts as Sheldon said her name. "I said your name three times, Amy," Sheldon complained, "Why weren't you listening to me."
"I'm sorry," Amy replied robotically. She could give Commander Data a run for his money. She'd been around Sheldon and the boys too long if she actually knew how to make a Star Trek reference. "I got distracted. What were you saying?"
Push her own thoughts and worries to the back of her mind and focus on him. That's what she'd been doing for years and it worked in the sense that she and Sheldon were together. He was too childish, too needy, for their relationship to work any other way.
The neurobiologist knew exactly what to say to that. Repressing her emotions in favor of his was not healthy. Putting him first and never saying what was bothering her was bad for her mental health. And yet if she did anything else, Sheldon would run away again. The two of them were precariously balanced atop a house of cards just waiting to crumble. Amy had the foreboding feeling that all to soon they would finally face the gust of wind that would tear their carefully wrought construction apart. As a scientist, she did not place any stock in the hokum that was intuition and feeling without fact and evidence. As a woman, she could not help but be worried.