Author's note: why didn't anyone tell me I was spelling stethoscope incorrectly? The position of beta is now officially open, if anyone would like to apply.
They had stood together quietly, placing clothes in the washer, carefully measuring soap and fabric softener, exchanging only a few words as they went about the process of getting Sheldon's laundry started. Amy was surprised when Sheldon turned to head back upstairs considering the sign that advised the building tenants not to leave their laundry unattended, but Sheldon only remarked that there were currently no threats against him in the building, so they went back upstairs.
Amy's mind was preoccupied. She followed Sheldon back to his room again, drifting over to the stethoscope while he put his laundry basket back into his closet for the time being. She picked up the apparatus she had haphazardly left behind and opened its case again, intent on putting Sheldon's possession away neatly and properly. She was surprised when she felt him directly behind her, taking the stethoscope from her hands and turning it in his own to inspect.
"You know, when I was 18 and getting my second PhD, one of the girls in my dorm who was pre-Med tried to teach me how to use this." He paused and then added, almost as an after-thought, "Of course, she did it wrong."
Amy watched his hands as he curled the black tubing of the stethoscope around his finger, her brow furrowing slightly as she considered his confession. "How did she do it wrong? How did you meet this girl?" she asked.
"She and I had met in the library – not many people study in the science library every Saturday night, and we had exchanged polite greetings, and talked about our studies a few times. Anyway, one night, just a week before graduation, I was studying in the library and she came over to my desk. She said the soda machine had given her an extra can and asked if I wanted it."
Amy stayed silent, simply listening, mesmerized by his hands.
Sheldon seemed to get caught up in the memory and continued, "We talked for awhile. She had told me that she was studying to be a diagnostician, with a specialty in nephrology and infectious diseases, so when she started telling me how she was going into her residency starting that summer I congratulated her. But she was worried about her bedside manner and asked if I would be willing to let her give me a physical exam just to practice before she had to start doing the real thing." Sheldon paused and then went on slowly, "I was concerned at the time that the lymph nodes in my throat felt swollen, and had been for days, which was a clear indicator that perhaps I was developing throat cancer, so I thought that it couldn't hurt to let her look at me. We went back to her dorm room and she had me strip down to my underwear and tee-shirt and lay down on the bed. I remember..."
Sheldon trailed off, and turned the stethoscope over in his hands.
"Remember what?" Amy gently prodded. She had been standing at his elbow, intently watching the shifting expressions on his face as he recounted his story.
Sheldon shifted a little, his brow furrowing. He went on reluctantly, "She was going through the entire process correctly, telling me what she was listening for and why you place the stethoscope where you do. I mean, all things I already knew, of course. Then she had the chest piece on my abdomen to listen to my stomach, and then she…" Sheldon trailed off for a moment, his forehead furrowing even more deeply, "then she suddenly slid it into my underwear and said something about listening for my 'morning alarm clock.'" Sheldon paused and looked down at Amy, inquiring, "What would an alarm clock be doing in my underwear?" Sheldon's facial expression turned baffled, and he turned the stethoscope over in his hands as if the answer to the comment lay somewhere in it.
Amy bit down on her lower lip, "What did you do?"
"I left!" Sheldon said, looking at Amy in surprise, as if the answer was obvious. "That's not correct procedure; I don't have an alarm clock in my pants." He shrugged and continued, "I grabbed my clothes, informed her of her mistaken methodology, and told her she was probably going to be a horrible doctor, and I bolted back for the safety of my own room." He shook his head, and added for emphasis, "Clearly she was a total quack."
"Sheldon," Amy said, unable to keep from shaking her head at him, "you realize she was just trying to have sex with you." She noticed a Rubik's cube that was sitting out among the toys on his dresser and picked it up. She turned away from him, studying the Rubik's cube rather intently, and sat down on the edge of his bed.
"What on earth are you talking about?" Sheldon said, staring at her as she walked away, apparently preoccupied with the colorful cube in her hands.
Amy leaned her back up against Sheldon's headboard, perched on the edge of his bed with one toe on the floor and her other foot hooked around the back of her calf. "Sex, Sheldon," Amy said, looking up at him. "She was trying to seduce you. Probably figured that inviting you up to play doctor would be more effectual than asking you up to see her CD collection."
Sheldon spent several seconds just staring at Amy, and then he looked up and frowned. "Actually, she did ask me up to see her CD collection once."
"Of course she did," Amy muttered, leaning her head back against the headboard. She closed her eyes tiredly. "Of course she did." Amy rubbed her forehead a moment with one hand, and then looked up at Sheldon and studied his shocked face. She felt compelled to explain a few things to him, and said, "Sheldon, listen to me. She really liked you, and she was running out of time to do anything about it. All that time hanging out in the library and trying to talk to you hadn't worked out, so she tried something a little bolder. And you rejected her, by the way. Not very nicely, I might add."
Sheldon didn't seem to know what to say to that. He looked down at the stethoscope he had twined in his fingers, studying the metal curves of the earpieces, of the black tubing, and the circle of the sensitive chest piece. There wasn't a straight line on the apparatus anywhere, and the funny rubber tubing looped and curled by its own whims, never staying in place nor being predictable, and he could eye it and roughly calculate its curves and swoops, much like he had spent a considerable amount of time calculating those belonging to the woman in the room with him, but it was so impossible to pin down, just like her. Sheldon caressed his fingertip along a curve of the stethoscope carefully, and then started to put it away in its box, pressing it gently into the foam cut outs meant to cradle it in place and hold it still.
Amy opened her eyes and considered the frame of Sheldon's back. She asked quietly, "Do you ever still think of her?"
"No," Sheldon answered, carefully closing the lid on the stethoscope's black case. "Not for years." He looked back over his shoulder at her, and she dropped her eyes, looking at the cube in her hands. She started to turn it, the cube making a soft whirring noise as she changed the monochromatic sides into neat checkerboards of different colors, the red on the green, the blue on the orange, and the white on the yellow. Sheldon watched her play with it, change it, his perfect cube with its three by three colorful panels, nine squares to a side, nine sides in all, eighty-one different smaller squares, and its perfect twenty-seven line frame. He had solved it and made it perfect, and now she was twisting it and changing it so easily in her small hands, turning the simple walls of color into more complicated patterns, and Sheldon's stomach did a strange lurch as he watched her, fascinated and terrified at the same time.
"What did you do, when you got back to your dorm room?" Amy asked, taking a look up at him.
"What do you mean?" Sheldon asked, giving a subtle roll to his shoulders as he tried to shrug off his feelings.
"I mean," Amy said, looking up at the ceiling for answers before looking back to him, "After you left her room, did you go back to your dorm room and study some more?"
Sheldon paused, and then answered cautiously, "No."
"Did you go home and masturbate?" Amy inquired, without batting a lash. To her surprise, Sheldon didn't protest her question, but he didn't even move at all, seeming to completely freeze. Without realizing it, she twisted the Rubik cube in her hands, beginning to mix up any semblance of structure or order to the color scheme. Sheldon watched her do it and grew paler, reaching to place a hand on top of his dresser as if for support.
"Did I what?" he finally asked.
Amy shifted and pulled herself a little taller, deliberately putting the cube down behind a pillow to hide it from him. "Sheldon, look. The game of 'playing doctor' has been around forever; even little children play it. It really has nothing to do with actually diagnosing anyone; the purpose is to give two people an excuse to become vulnerable and undressed, to explore each others bodies and satisfy their curiosity about another person external to themselves; a body different than theirs. This girl you knew put you into a vulnerable position, asked you to put your trust in her, and then explored your body; touching you, leaving you exposed. One would expect you would have been aroused; turned on. It would have been a perfectly normal reaction."
He frowned at the word "normal," but very slowly, Sheldon approached the bed and sat down on the edge a few feet from Amy. He leaned over, putting his elbows on his knees, and looked down at his hands, pinching one thumb with the other. Finally, he said in a very soft voice, "Would you think less of me if I did?"
"No," Amy said simply, watching him.
Sheldon clasped his hands together and stared at the floor, sitting that way for a long time. Finally, he roused himself and seemed to give himself a shake, clearing his throat as he said, "I….I can't…I can't remember."
Amy inhaled, and bit the inside of her lower lip, shoulders slumping as she glanced at the floor and then the profile of Sheldon's face. She picked up the Rubik's cube and gave it several more twists, slowly and deliberately, until she was sure it had been jumbled beyond repair. Sheldon glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes, looking horrified, and then went back to staring at the floor.
Amy stood and walked to the door, still spinning the cube around quickly in her hands. Sheldon's stomach seemed to lurch with every twist of the cube, and every footfall that carried her away from him. At his door, she turned around and said, "Sheldon, that girl wanted to have sex with you, and you remember perfectly well how that made you feel, and you are lying when you say you don't."
Sheldon turned around to look at her, his jaw setting tersely. She tossed him the Rubik's cube, and he caught up against his chest. The two of them looked at each other for a long moment, and then Amy spun on her heel and left without another word.
It was a long time before Sheldon finally roused himself from thought. He looked at the cube in his hands. Quickly, with deft and sure movement of his hands, he spun the pieces of the cube this way and that, resetting it back to the way it had been before, undoing everything she had done to change it, until it returned to its perfect state of solid panels of color. Sheldon stood up and put the cube on top of the stethoscope case, and looked at it sitting there, on top of the curvy, sensitive instrument the black box contained, the two objects together, touching. Then he picked the cube up quickly, paced across the room, and stuffed it into his underwear drawer, hiding it far back behind all of his neat stacks of simple, cotton white briefs. He slammed the drawer closed and turned away, grabbing the remaining roll of quarters from his bureau.
Resolutely, he marched out of his room, down the hall, striding over the fake, tiny village that he now felt entirely stupid to have named after himself, and took himself downstairs.
When he reached the basement, he flipped open the door to one of the dryers and stepped over to the first washing machine, and started shifting his clothing from one to the other. Something in the movements of this basic routine started to calm his nerves once again, and just when he felt his breathing was starting to slow and reality was regaining its equilibrium, he double checked all of the washing machines and found a black lump that he had missed plastered up against the wall of the barrel of one. Reaching in, he pulled out a black tee-shirt and caught sight of a piece of the graphic in the balled up material.
After a pause, Sheldon spread the cloth open slowly, staring down at the graphic on one of his favorite shirts. The mixed up Rubik's cube symbol stared back at him, the graphic showing the cube melting into a chaos of colors, their shape lost, their pattern becoming a meaningless puddle. He reached out his hand and stroked the tips of his fingers over it, thinking about when he had bought it, the times he had worn it, including the very last time, in the movie theater with her, holding her hand in the dark.
Sheldon closed his hand and balled up the shirt into his fist, turning and raising his arm to throw the shirt into the trash. At the last second something stopped him. He hugged the damp material to his chest instead, and then threw it into the dryer with everything else. With curt gestures he closed the dyers and deployed the coin slots, listening to the low grumble of the machines as they came to life.
"Forget all of this nonsense," he hissed to himself, but the superior, almost computer-like recall of his mind would not let him; the mnemotechnics of memory rumbled through his head like a roll of thunder, spinning hot like the dryers surrounding him, bringing back in perfect detail each past episode, letting him know he was unable to escape it.
He was standing, staring at one of the dryers, when Leonard and Penny came in, laughing softly between each other, and carrying a laundry basket full of Penny's sheets. They stopped when they saw Sheldon, and Leonard grinned and noted, "Keeping an eye on those machines, Sheldon? Making sure they won't rise up and take over the basement?"
Sheldon looked up and blinked at them, and then replied, "How can you trust anything when you can't see where it keeps its brain, hum?" He paused and then inquired, "How did your round of giant Jenga go?"
Leonard and Penny stopped and looked at him, confused.
"I heard all of those noises," Sheldon said, "It sounded like it got quite spirited."
"Oh, yeah," Penny said, biting her lower lip, "We….we ended up playing a different game."
Sheldon looked at her in confusion and Penny waved her hands a little bit, "Never mind, it's uh, a new two-person game we made up. We're very into it."
"Ah," Sheldon said, nodding as if he understood, or at least accepted Penny's remark at face value. "So who won?"
"I gave Penny some stiff competition," Leonard said, grinning widely even as Penny swatted his arm. He walked towards the washing machines, balancing the laundry basket on top of one. "But she plays dirty. She always wins." The man could not seem to stop smiling, and Sheldon looked between both of them in confusion.
"Never mind that," Penny said, casting Leonard a long look. She turned her attention back to Sheldon and asked, "Soooooo?" She stepped over closer to him, "How was your night with Amy? Did the two of you play any games? Maybe a round of counterfactuals?"
Sheldon looked down and shuffled his feet, turning around to return to supervising his dryer. "She helped me with my laundry."
"Was it dirty?" Penny asked, coming to stand by his shoulder. She looked up at him, her expression full of false innocence.
Sheldon cast her a warning glance, but then seemed to think better of it. He crossed his arms over his stomach, saying, "Penny, would you say that your extensive sexual history makes you an expert, of sorts, on all matters relating to coitus? That you're a sexual prodigy, if you will?"
"I, uh," Penny made a face, looking at Sheldon skeptically, "I have a bad feeling about this, but I'm in a generous mood, so….sure, Sheldon! You may consider me a sexual expert." She muttered under her breath, "At least in comparison to you."
"I do not want to know where he is going with this," Leonard muttered, stuffing Penny's sheets into the washing machine as fast as he could.
"Good," Sheldon said, swinging his arms to clasp his hands behind his back. "I have a question, and I believe that after you, for lack of a better word, 'probed' into my personal life a few weeks ago, you should be willing to help me out now."
"I am warning you," Leonard drawled softly, even as he picked up the jug of laundry detergent.
Penny ignored Leonard, and instead crossed her arms over her stomach and tilted her head back, widening her stance and literally bracing herself for what was coming. "I can handle this. Lay it on me, Sheldon."
"Alright," Sheldon agreed, nodding his head. "Tell me, what is a 'morning alarm clock' a sexual metaphor for?" Sheldon ducked his chin and looked at Penny seriously.
Leonard made a choking sound, and dropped the cap of the laundry detergent into the dryer, tried to catch it and lost his footing, falling in after it. Penny looked over, taking in her boyfriend's flailing legs and squirming buttocks, and moved across the room to grab him by the waist band of his cargo pants and start pulling him back. "I, uh," Penny said, even as she pulled Leonard back out. "Sheldon, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I have no idea."
Sheldon threw his hands up, complaining, "Penny! If you can't help me with this then what are you good for?"
"Hey! How am I supposed to know what a 'morning alarm clock' means?" Penny protested, even as she put Leonard back on his feet. "I've never heard of it."
"It refers to an erection you get in the morning," Leonard cut in, looking at Sheldon warily as he wiped some bright blue goo off his cheek, "As the brain enters the REM-deep sleep phrase the body's skeletal muscle structure relaxes and causes hypervasodilation in the capillaries of the body, resulting in waking up to an erection that typically rouses you from sleep. Hence, your natural morning alarm clock."
"Oh," Sheldon said, blinking once and staring blankly at the wall. "I guess she was right."
"Okay, I'm going to let you guys discuss this further," Penny said, gesturing between the two of them, "'Cause whenever you start in on hyper, uh, hypervasa-something-or-other, it's, you know, uh, clearly boy talk." She tried to sidestep away, but Leonard caught her by the fabric of her tank top and gently yanked her back.
"Oh, no you don't," Leonard said, scrutinizing Sheldon closely. "You are not leaving me alone in this one, missy."
"That's okay," Sheldon said, "That's all I wanted to know."
"That's it?" Leonard asked.
"That's it," Sheldon repeated, walking briskly for the door.
"Wait," Penny said, "Aren't you going to tell us where that question even came from?"
Sheldon stopped in the doorway and turned, spending several seconds looking back and forth between them innocently. "No," he said, turning on his heel and exiting without another word.
Penny and Leonard exchanged a glance, and then Leonard said slowly, "Hyper-vaso-di-la-tion."
"You can call it whatever you want," Penny told him, "But you are paying to wash these sheets." She patted the washing machine twice and walked away.
In his room, Sheldon carefully placed the Rubik's cube back on top of the stethoscope case once again. He touched the box, and the apparatus it contained: curvy, sensitive, flexible, changeable, all of that kept secret, unseen, hidden inside its plain black shell. He touched the Rubik's cube and considered its dimensions: square, colorful, organized, hard. He bit his lower lip, looking at the cube distrustfully. It was changeable too, and he was not sure he liked that idea. Even more, he wasn't sure how he felt about leaving the two objects together, the masculine on top of the feminine, but when he reached out to move them he stopped, unwilling to separate them either. Instead he just looked at them, attempting to get used to the idea of them together. He took a deep breath, and then turned away and sat down on his bed with his laptop, opening it and starting to type.
He had some private research to do.
Thanks for reading,
Lio