"I'm sorry!" Amy dashed into the lab, out of breath. "I'm sorry i'm late!"
Howard looked up from the piece of code he had been working on and took in the sight of his colleague, friend's roomate's girlfriend, member of wife's circle, and, at the end of the day, tentative friend in her own right. Uh oh. "Amy, you're not late. It's ten to eight."
Amy looked at the clock on the wall. "Oh." She seemed to practically deflate. "It feels like I should be late."
"What is it?" Howard asked, but what he meant was, what did Sheldon do? Sometimes he wondered if, in the final reckoning, getting Amy to meet Sheldon was going to count for or against him. Then he remembered Jews didn't have that and he really should feel bad about this on Yom Kippur instead, but whatever.
"Nothing," Amy said, grinning in panic. "Nothing at all."
"Your socks are mismatched, your cardigan is buttoned up wrong and your hair clip is on the other side," he pointed out.
Amy clapped her hand to her head, then threw her bag down and collapsed despondently on a chair. "We broke up. I mean, I broke up. He didn't notice."
Woah! "That's..." What was he supposed to say? 'Good for you', 'congrats' and 'awesome', all occurred to him. Howard patted Amy's shoulder instead and settled for "there, there. It'll be ok. What happened?"
Amy sighed. "After the New Year's party. I couldn't deal with him anymore."
"I see." Howard remembered Bernadette giggling into his neck with a certain optimism after Sheldon had stomped in on them that night, but he had been more skeptical. They should have bet on it - he might have gotten sex or TV privleges. "So last night he finally noticed you broke up?"
"This morning," she said, looking at her hands. "He came over."
"Huh. You'd think the one good thing about dating Sheldon is that you really can break up by text message in morse code? Sheldon Cooper - no muss, no fuss." He was trying to cheer her up, but she only looked more miserable. He was not doing really well at this, was he?
Amy glanced at him, then looked away. "There was muss," her voice was tiny.
Oh. OH. She couldn't mean...no, she did mean. There was only one way to read that blush. Howard took the chair next to her and planted his fists on his knees. Another man might have shied away from discussing those most intimate details of a friend's life, but Howard Wolowitz was the all-time reigning champion of excruciatingly uncomfortable coversations with women about sex. Compared to that time at that conference in Orlando with that roboticist with that business with the toes, this was a walk in the park. Besides, talking about Sheldon and Amy's sex-life was less gossiping about his friends and more the collection of unique scientific data. "Ok, let's hear it."
"There was kissing," she said sideways. "Mostly naked kissing."
His mental giggle sounded quite a bit like Bernadette. "And?"
"And then I freaked out and told him to leave." Amy buried her face in her hands. "What is wrong with me?"
Didn't see that coming. "Usually that would be a complicated question, but given your circumstances, what's wrong with you is Sheldon."
Amy looked up to glare at him. "Why are you always so mean to him?"
He was mean to Sheldon? There was the slightly crazy Amy he knew and loved! "Because I know he can be better, when he tries." Howard touched the wedding ring on his hand unconsciously. "If I could pull it off, so can Sheldon."
"He did try. It was my fault."
"It's not your fault."
"How do you know?"
"I know Sheldon-"
"You're being mean again," Amy said.
"I know Sheldon, in his own crazy, crazy way, cares a hell of a lot about you."
"Oh."
#
Sheldon opened the door. "Bernadette, hello. Penny isn't here. Leonard isn't here either."
Bernadette smiled sweetly and slipped past him into the apartment. "I was looking for you."
Sheldon closed the door and frowned down at her. "Why?"
"I want to surprise Howard and Amy. They're going to be working really late. We'll get a pizza and take it over there and have a nice dinner with them."
"Tonight is Thai food night," Sheldon said.
"Oh don't give me that!" Bernadette resisted stamping her foot. She was not going to let a miserable, lonely Amy ruin a cute surprise dinner for her and her husband. Even more importantly, she was not going to let him make Amy lonely and miserable, for once. "We can get Thai food. Or you can have a pizza on Tuesday. It won't kill you."
"But tonight is..." he drifted off with nothing of his usual conviction. Something was off about him, but she couldn't put her finger on what.
"Tonight is what?"
Sheldon shrugged and waved her away. "Well, Amy broke up with me, so it's not a very good plan."
"Oh, Sheldon. Why?"
"Some nonsense about coitus."
"I thought you were, you know, making progress in that department." It was a guess, but one she was fairly sure of, from Amy's hints and smiles.
"Thank you! Me too," Sheldon said as if it were self-evident. "I stayed up all night and made a five-year plan."
Bernadette frowned, then shrugged. "I suppose a developing country with a centralized economy is as good a metaphor for your sexuality as anything."
"Exactly." Sheldon nodded. "I did the required reading. I could do a degree in sex. I know everything about sex."
"You don't know the first thing about sex."
"That is also true." He admitted. "Apparently. There's an agreement, there's a plan. It's all nice and simple. There's structure and order and a logical progression based on reasonably sound research. What's wrong with that?"
Oh, for heaven's sake! Leonard really should have had this talk with the kid a long time ago. Why did she have to do everything around here?
"If you wanted simple and ordered and nothing else, why go out with Amy in the first place?" she asked, as gently as she could.
Sheldon hung his head, like a child caught stealing a cookie. "I like her?"
Bernadette suddenly figured out what seemed off. He was only wearing one t-shirt. A green one, and it looked a little on the crumpled side. Unnoticeable on anyone else, on Sheldon the visibility of elbows was downright jarring. Sheldon always wore two shirts, that was what Sheldon did. She saw him differently then, as if something else had peeled away with the habitual uniform. Not a robot or a brain in a jar or genius or a freak, not a collection of phobias and conditions, but just for a moment, only a guy trying to figure out what to do about a girl.
"Sheldon?"
"Yes?"
It was like ripping off a bandaid, but it had to be done. Bernadette did not believe in coddling. "Are you in love with Amy?"
Sheldon stared at her in shock, as if she had done something truly obscene, and then almost visibly took control of himself again. He shrugged and almost smiled. "Like I would even know?"
Oh dammit.
Bernadette hurried across the room, grabbed the brown chair, placed it next to him, climbed up, and wrapped him in a smothering hug. "You know."
