I've returned, beautiful humans! If you've come back to read more...thank you! You're just lovely. I shall now attempt a second chapter. This chapter was... a bit harder for me to write without getting out of character, so please don't yell... That is all.

The plane wasn't exactly crowded as not a lot of people would be going from Los Angeles to Galveston for the holidays. Because really, who would go from LA to Galveston when the family could see LA? So it was quiet. Apparently, there had been some kind of an issue with the pilots and the plane didn't actually take off until almost nine - much to Sheldon's annoyance. At first Leonard was relieved at the other man's return to normalcy. Or Sheldon's version of normalcy.

That is until it ended, and Leonard simply watched as his friend fidgeted, uncomfortable with his assigned seat but also unable to move about the cabin to seat-hunt without being asked to simply sit down or looking suspicious.

"Sheldon, can you please just try to relax?" He finally asked, "We aren't really going to be on the plane for very long..."

Sheldon rolled his eyes, "No, Leonard. Relaxing at this point is nearly impossible as now my plans are ruined. Rather than reaching Galveston at approximately eleven forty-five and being picked up by Missy at twelve-thirty, we won't be arriving until about one forty-five."

"And?"

"And! Missy will be unable to get us due to a previous engagement. With my mother in Houston for the day finishing her Christmas shopping and my brother George driving down from Fort Worth our only options are to take a taxi or rent a vehicle, neither of which are options I'd wanted to consider."

Leonard sighed softly, looking at his friend with a mix of annoyance and pity. He wondered exactly what it was that made dealing with simple stresses so difficult for Sheldon. Leonard hadn't considered stress to be a major problem in a long time and he couldn't understand why his friend had such an issue. Sure, this all was an inconvenience, but it wasn't the end of their world, right?

A hour into the flight, and Sheldon was still fidgeting in his seat, looking around and unable to focus. While his expression didn't say so, to Leonard his eyes appeared those of a half-starved, half-dead, frightened animal trapped in a cage and searching for an escape.

"Sheldon, didn't anyone ever try and teach you to deal with stress?" He finally asked, half out of concern and half out of embarrassment from association.

"Well of course. Meemaw taught me the serenity prayer in an effort to help me keep calm during my adolescence as my anxiety began." As Sheldon spoke he continued searching around, not looking at Leonard.

The serenity prayer...?

"You mean 'grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.'?" Leonard had been raised without religion but remembered it from a book of prayers from his theology class in college, which he'd taken as an elective. It had been fun, listening to others talk about the religions they'd been raised with and hearing them debate, but then feeling an odd sense of shame when he had nothing to contribute. He supposed he was an atheist. Or maybe an agnostic. But how could he know, really, with no upbringing?

Sheldon nodded, and then shook his head, as though it were one single motion. He turned his glance to Leonard, his blue eyes making contact with the spectacle-hidden brown ones for the first time in hours. "Not exactly, no... That's the most known version. I was taught what is believed to be the original version which is attributed to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr from a sermon in 1943, the version being 'God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it, trusting that You will make all things right, if I surrender to Your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen.' ...However Meemaw's efforts to help me with my anxiety during my youth and up until now have never succeeded."

"Why not?" Leonard asked, surprised by how...prayerfully, for lack of a better word, Sheldon recited the lines. As far as he could tell Sheldon rarely seemed to become stressed over work or their friends or his relationship with Amy, things that seemed to matter far more than the plane taking off at the right time. He knew the other was brilliant and likely never needed to worry about his work, but to never worry about his relationships...

Did Sheldon simply not care for anyone else?

No, that couldn't be it, could it? Sheldon certainly wasn't some warm, affectionate person, but he must have cared at least a bit for his friends, right...?

"Why do you let such small problems bother you?"

Again Leonard received no response, Sheldon turning his gaze toward his feet, as though for the first time in his life the answer had eluded him. Despite the fact that it had been the second time in one day.

They'd reached Galveston around two. Got their bags by two fifteen. Rental car one had a dead battery. Rental car two's key wouldn't fit. Sheldon didn't like rental car three. By the time they'd gotten rental car four and driven to Sheldon's home in Galveston it was nearly six o'clock, hunger and sleeplessness having turned them to half-zombies at that point.

Sheldon's family was perfectly pleasant, of course: Mary showing more affection to Sheldon than he could ever reciprocate, and Missy was her charming self, the polar opposite of Sheldon. Leonard finally met Sheldon's brother George Junior. George stood even taller than Sheldon did, and was about ten times as built. He wasn't exactly 'dumb as soup' as their mother had once described, but he clearly wasn't brilliant as his younger brother was. Leonard was told that he would be staying in Sheldon's room and sleeping on the old fold-up bed, but that didn't bother him - he was so tired from getting up early and from their little adventure that if he'd been told to sleep in the dog house it would have been acceptable.

It wasn't until the end of the meal that Leonard began to feel a bit off, and was horrified when he asked Mary about it and learned there was cream in the recipe. Cream. In the recipe. Even Sheldon looked horrified at the realization, though Leonard figured it was more out of concern for himself than for his friend's lactose issue.

After a few minutes Leonard stood up, "I think I'll go to sleep now if you don't mind, Mrs. Cooper, I'm sorry to not help but I'm very tired," he said as politely as he possibly could before he quickly stepped out, making his way down the hall and into Sheldon's (and currently his own) room.

At the table the four who remained were quiet for a moment, Sheldon in horror, the rest in confusion. "Is he alright, Shelly Bean?" Mary asked, her voice sounding concerned in the way that only a mother can sound.

"Oh he'll be alright, it's me who'll need to suffer sleeping inside of a malodorous cloud of methane and hydrogen sulfide," And he left it at that. To his surprise they didn't question it, though he became even more horrified by the next subject:

"So Shelly how's Amy doing?" His twin sister asked, and instantly, for the first time in a very, very long time Sheldon felt his blood run cold for an instant, and he looked between the three of them, seeing the expectation on their faces, imagining the disappointment, the hatred...

"She and I are no longer seeing one another..." He muttered, his typical apathetic mask barely hanging on.

"What?" Missy asked in surprise, George shaking his head a bit as Mary questioned why and saying something about how they all liked Amy, their expressions turning to those of surprise more than anything else.

Sheldon was quiet for a moment, mentally composing himself before quickly saying "Her sexual drive and desire for me became overwhelming and she was rather inconsiderate toward my desires, or lack thereof. She constantly proposed social experiments when I had made it clear that I lacked interest in the social sciences and was unwilling to be a lab rat to her." He said all of this in a very simple way, as though he were saying the time and it hadn't bothered him in the slightest to break things off with Amy, even though they'd been together for a couple of years.

The expressions on their faces, and Mary saying how much they'd all liked her, prompted a feeling of almost-guilt in Sheldon. He almost wanted to say 'it wasn't my fault,' but he realized before saying it that it wasn't appropriate.

Apparently he'd earned gentle words of consolation and a pat on the back from his brother, all of them saying something to the effect that he'd find 'that special girl' one day...

Well why did they need to say it like that...?

He hated, hated hated going home to his family! When it was only Missy or only Mary it was alright, or maybe it was this house they were in that was the problem... but visiting them all, in this place, was the only time when Sheldon would nearly lose check of his emotion. Of his fears. The only time when something seemed to tear at his defensive bubble of trained apathy and suppression. They couldn't know, they could never know...

He honestly tried to smile at them, he really did, but nothing happened. Because he knew that if they ever found out they'd never be okay with it...

"Oh good Lord. Well, I can see you've already managed to produce a copious amount of noxious gas. Luckily for the family it seems to be sealed within this room. Unluckily for me it's absolutely fetid."

Sheldon had waited a couple of hours to go into his room, catching up with his siblings and trying to calm down out on the deck in the back yard, hoping that maybe the fumes would have gone away, though he knew they wouldn't have. He found Leonard laid down on the fold-up bed, which was directly next to Sheldon's, curled up in a fetal position, looking sleepy and sick and miserable in his vintage Cheap Trick T-shirt and sweatpants. Sheldon still didn't understand why the other had that shirt - he'd never mentioned liking Cheap Trick, and they didn't seem Leonard's taste.

"I'm sorry," Leonard half-muttered, a small whimper of discomfort almost escaping him as the light turned on and he saw Sheldon standing there, wearing the pajamas that he'd gotten from his bag, a coffee mug in hand. He was humiliated. If he were honest with himself he knew it was something he shouldn't even worry about - just hours before he'd wanted Sheldon to deal with the inconvenience he couldn't solve - but now his own advice seemed impossible. Even if only his best friend were there to witness Leonard's pathetic state, it was horrible...

"Well don't apologize for it. You didn't know what was in the recipe... And it isn't your fault that you were cursed with a genetic predisposition to turn into a biological weapon whenever you eat cheese," if Sheldon possessed a stronger sense of humor he probably would have laughed at that, but he was being sincere, his tone oddly kind. He slowly walked over and sat on the side of Leonard's bed, the other side directly against his own bed in the small room, "Sit up," he said, holding the mug out to him, "This should help a bit with the borborygmus and the discomfort."

Leonard obeyed, staring at Sheldon in surprise, "Thanks," he said quietly, taking the mug from him, "That's really nice of you Sheldon." Sheldon nodded and smiled for a brief moment before his expression returned to its normal mask, but to Leonard it didn't look like Sheldon's normal, awkward and forced or laughing smile. This was different, and...pleasant.

The two of them were quiet at that, Leonard laying the empty mug down on the floor sleepily, laying down, his back facing Sheldon, "I'm sorry again," he said quietly through a yawn, hearing the desk lamp click and opening his eyes to darkness. Sheldon was lying only about a foot away from him, a few inches up since his bed was elevated a bit higher, but it didn't seem awkward.

"As I said, there's no reason to apologize for an unfortunate genetic predisposition."

Leonard couldn't help but laugh softly at his friend, but regretted it a moment later when a jolt of pain shot through his stomach, causing him to wince a bit, curling up a bit more.

What happened then was an even bigger shock than the pain.

He felt a careful, hesitant, gentle hand reach out from the darkness and lay itself on his back, over the T-shirt, rubbing his back gently in an obvious effort to offer some kind of comfort. Leonard blushed heavily, though he didn't really know why... He wasn't creeped out or uncomfortable because of it, and while it didn't exactly solve his problem it didn't make it any worse, and he thought that it might have eased the pain a bit.

And as odd as it might have been Leonard was sure it was one of the most affectionate and kindest things his best friend had ever tried to do for him.

"Sheldon..."

The movement stopped, "I'm sorry," Sheldon's voice rang out quietly, in a surprisingly anxious tone, "I'm aware that it doesn't... I simply...you appeared to be in pain and..."

"No, it's alright," Leonard answered, surprised by Sheldon's stammering, "I appreciate it..." to his surprise the hand returned a moment later, carefully circling his back. He knew that Sheldon had no bad intentions - it wasn't perverted or strange or any kind of violent - it was simply an honest desire to help him...

"Are you sure you're okay?" Leonard asked softly, "You've seemed more and more nervous lately."

"Hmm..." Sheldon stopped for a brief moment as he thought, before continuing, "Yeah, I'm okay..."

But the answer wasn't as clear as he'd wanted it to be. Sheldon was acting different. And apart from his unusual kindness and his nervous tones, Leonard was sure he'd never seen that smile before.

For some reason he found himself blushing at the thought of it. That smile...

It had been beautiful.

"So you're okay?" He asked.

"I'm okay," Sheldon said softly. After a brief pause he continued, "You're okay?"

"Yeah. I'm okay..."

End of Chapter 2. Poor Leonard. Well, happens I guess. ...aaaah I feel like I went REALLY out of character. I mean of course Sheldon's supposed to be acting a bit out of character but I hope I didn't screw up too badly on the dialogue this time around.

Chapter 3 to come at...some point...in the future...