How could something feel so good and be so scary at the same time?
Sheldon's hands on her, his lips, felt like relief. It was as if a car siren that had been going all night had finally been turned off, and here was the moment of quiet before the dawn.
Barely breaking away from kissing him, Amy fumbled for the hem of his shirt, and then for the hem of the other shirt, and Sheldon helped her pull them over his head. She let her fingertips press against his chest - his skin was desperately pale, but warm and solid and real.
Sheldon seemed to be doing his best just to keep breathing. His eyes moved constantly - meeting hers for a moment, then flickering away to the ceiling or the carpet or - Amy felt her entire body blush. Including parts of the human body that it was her professional opinion were incapable of blushing. Or possibly someone had set her on fire and she had not gotten around to noticing yet. Sheldon is looking at my breasts.
Was this really happening? Really about to happen? The moment, the sex, the it, here on her couch at seven in the morning on a Tuesday? Oh my god.
Sheldon jerked his wide, unblinking eyes back to her face. "Sorry."
That's not right. Amy shook her head, not sure she could speak. She reached for his hand and drew it up her body to cup her breast. Sheldon stared at her, frozen, his hand resting on her skin. It felt good, but intrusive. Wasn't that the point? Her heart was pounding but everything else terribly still, the whole room trapped in amber. She didn't know what to do now.
"Say something," Sheldon said. That wasn't helpful. She couldn't do this alone.
"Are you ok?" It was the only thing she could think of.
"Of course," he said, but his expression hovered somewhere between paralysis and stark raving terror. "This is slightly faster than my plan called for, but the underlying principles appear to be universal."
Yeah, was that Sheldon's idea of dirty talk? Sexy.
He swallowed and never looked away from her eyes, but his thumb drew a hesitant, stumbling circle over her nipple. It sent a jolt of sensation straight down her spine, raw and intense.
It was too much. Amy pulled away, as far as she could, and tugged her quilt of granny squares to cover herself. Her actual granny had made that for her. She couldn't just have sex on it!
"Amy? What did I do wrong?" Sheldon looked so vulnerable and confused she couldn't bear look at him,.
"Nothing. It's..." What? She was the one who had gotten him here. She couldn't be the one to back out, could she?
"All the contemporary research agrees that nipples are an erogenous zone. If you don't like having your nipples touched, you should probably see a physician."
"Sheldon!" Amy was almost screaming, and she felt the hot prickle of tears coming. She couldn't listen to this. What would her mother say? She hugged the quilt tighter to her, hiding, but her skin was over-sensitive. The feeling of the rough texture on her breasts was almost unbearable.
"I am trying!" Sheldon had raised his voice. That was enough to snap her into looking at him again. He had gone even paler than usual, somehow. "Trying a lot."
Amy hunched down under his anger. He never yelled. Why was he yelling now? Why couldn't he just go back to looking past her and talking about what would happen if cats were uplifted and allowed to vote?
"I'm sorry fucking me is a such a chore!" she shouted.
The oath did its job. He jerked to his feet and stumbled back, away from her. Slapping him would have gotten less of a reaction.
"Amy!"
"Get out!"
A moment of stillness, and then Sheldon darted forward to grab one of the three of his shirts that had built up on the couch. Then he was gone, without even closing the door behind him. For the second time in as many days, Sheldon had left her alone, clutching a blanket, but...might he have gone through with it, just to keep her from leaving? That was a good thing, surely. It showed how much he cared, right?
Wrong. "Jerk." Amy muttered under her breath, and then the tears came. She didn't want to be a project, she knew that much.
Oh, use your eyes, Fowler. Her inner voice snapped. This time, she had been the one who pushed him out. There was only so much she could blame Sheldon for. Kissing him had felt so, so good, but that was easy. Sex was...she didn't know what sex was.
She had thought she was ready, she had thought that this was what she wanted, but what if she just wasn't ready? What did that mean, actually, being ready? Was there a list? Was it like an avocado, where sometimes you needed to give it a few days? Could you see the difference between ready and not ready on an MRI?
Maybe some people are never ready. Maybe she just didn't have it in her, and it wasn't Sheldon at all, but her that had been the problem all along. She just wasn't made for feeling all those things, the pleasure and the fireworks and all of that, and maybe she should just learn to live with that already.
She could still feel every line he had traced on her back like railways cutting through the landscape. Please, please go away.