Sheldon stretched his long legs out in front of him on the bed and balanced his computer on his lap. While this was not ergonomically correct (a fact that bothered him), he was not comfortable doing this research out in the living room. He leaned his back against his headboard and typed into the Google search engine: "How to talk about sex with your girlfriend."
The first result Google spit back at him was "How to know if your girlfriend wants to have sex with you." Stopping to ponder the question, Sheldon stared ahead of him with an intense expression. Confound it, he thought. Logically you would have to figure out if your girlfriend wants to have sex with you before you talk to her about it. Because if she doesn't want to have sex with you, obviously you don't have to go through the hideous experience of talking about it.
"Clever Google," he praised the search engine in a mutter.
The webpage that came up was part of WikiHow. Other men ask this question too? Sheldon thought, even as he exhaled a breath he didn't know he had been holding. Somehow it was good to know he wasn't the only man in the known universe who had ever pondered this question.
His relief was short-lived, however, when he read the first step at the top of the page: "Assess your relationship." It felt like an important valve closed up somewhere in his chest, and an electrical pulse was misfiring from his sternum up to the nape of his neck. He continued reading. "Ask yourself how far you and your girlfriend have come along in terms of intimacy and maturity. In particular, pay attention to whether or not the two of you are engaged in an uneven power dynamic (or even an outright power struggle); if the relationship is unbalanced with one partner always attempting to please the other, this will make both of you unable to approach sex with an honest, healthy attitude."
How far we've come in terms of intimacy and maturity? Sheldon thought, furrowing his brow, even as mental images of rulers and tape measures came to mind. He tried to picture placing himself up to Amy, figuring her height, taking her measure. None of these seemed like the proper way in which to measure their relationship. Watts? Jules? Knots? How do I accurately measure a relationship that had lasted me for three years, over half of it now as boyfriend and girlfriend proper? He visualized a massive bronze scale, himself in one cup and Amy in the other, holding onto the chains as they teetered up and down, as if in a giant seesaw. A power struggle? No. Amy and I are not in the midst of a power struggle. However, Sheldon took a long look at the word "intimate," and found himself starting to blush.
Then and there, Sheldon closed the laptop and ran both hands roughly through his hair, clasping the back of his bowed head. I don't know, he thought, I don't know how to analyze any of that. Personal relationships, body language, sarcasm, facial expressions – that's not what I am good at. My weakness, my kryptonite, my fear of bats – precisely what I suck at, and suck hard.
Sheldon growled softly, tore the computer from his lap and sprung off of his bed. He opened one of his dresser drawers and removed a little wooden box from behind some of his superhero shirts. He put it carefully on the dresser and opened it, removing the colorful little hacky sack. He looked around his room, his face intent. Even by the door, he barely had enough room to play, not to mention that Leonard and Penny were both still awake, and might come back into this part of the apartment at any time. They could hear him; they could ask questions.
Maybe if I just hold it, Sheldon thought, rolling the hackey sack in his fingers. He opened the door and strode into the hallway, and slowly, his hands clasped behind his back, he began to pace the apartment like a caged animal, walking down the hallway, around the couch, along the desks, around the kitchen island, and back down the hallway again, turning at Leonard's door and pacing back the way he came, rolling the hackey sack in his fingers the whole route, squeezing his thumb into the beany depths, mashing it in his fingers, squeezing it until it seemed it should burst, and then rolling it back around his thumb again.
First of all, he reasoned, I shouldn't tell myself that I suck; that isn't going to get me anywhere.
"But you do suck!" a tiny voice in his head told him merrily.
"Ah, look who has decided to show up tonight. Freud would call that your 'id,'" another part of Sheldon's brain noted dryly.
Together, they were that terrible two-faced laughing hyena of his psychic apparatus, which Sheldon had spent a lifetime driving down into the utter depths, drowning out through discipline and work. A lifetime striving to not just ignore, but to rise above. To cut out of his very system with surgical precision, and fling into the gutter where it belonged.
"Except you can't do that," that part of his mind reminded him, "and if you're going to give Amy what you think she wants—hell, what you really want—if your relationship is going to mature and grow and come to include sex and touch, you're going to have to come back here, Sheldon Cooper. Back to me. Back to your baser urges, back to your needs, your wants, your desires. Back to where it all begins, buddy."
Sheldon stopped at the fridge, opened the door to the freezer, crossed his arms on top of the lower door, and rested his head against them, feeling the blistering cold burn against his hair and creep into his scalp. Please, Jesus, let it burn right through the bone and into my brain, he thought.
Sheldon stood that way for a long time, his mind turning towards two options: forget this and let her go, or take what he wanted, embrace the chaos, turn towards the dark side, let himself surrender to all of those evil impulses that had been plaguing him for months. No, to be honest, years.
I've always been more of an empire man, his memory sparked to a little bit of dialogue he had once had with Leonard that was now coming back to haunt him. But that dark side had never been chaotic at all; it had been organized, driven, and clean. Just as he liked it, just as he always admired. So which is it, Sheldon? He lifted his head out of the freezer and reluctantly shut the door, continuing to consider the world of good and evil with which he was so familiar. Sometimes evil was portrayed a certain way, like The Joker or Venom – instinctual, destructive, wild, chaotic. Or it could be ruthlessly organized and efficient, like the Empire, Dr. Octopus, Lex Luthor and the Legion of Doom. And what, he reminded himself, was even remotely evil about my relationship, which makes me happy? He stood there awhile, holding onto the door of the freezer. Because it does make me happy, doesn't it? Love was always supposed to be the ultimate power of good and–WAIT.
Did I just use the word love?
Sheldon turned away from the kitchen sharply, and returned to pacing his apartment like a jungle cat, rolling his hackey sack from hand to hand, until he stopped in front of the apartment's front door and deliberately locked it. Screw Leonard. He strode into the living room and started to bounce the hackey sack on his foot, counting, one…two...three…and up, again and again, letting his mind unspool freely.
He had been playing for several minutes, his mind starting to clear, when he kicked the hackey sack up and caught it in his hand. I have our date night minutes. My logbooks of social interactions. My eidetic memory itself–if I'm going to find the answers those are perfectly good places to start. Sheldon stood up taller, straightening his spine. Assess the relationship, he repeated to himself, remembering his organized collection of paperwork and records. It's as good a place to start as any.
Sheldon retrieved their Date Night minute binder, his logbook and a blank notepad from his desk, grabbed a pen, and went back to his room. He put these aside on the edge of the bed and opened his computer again. He paused to look up at his dresser, the colorful Rubik's cube and stephoscope sitting so peacefully there together. Perhaps I can do this after all. Perhaps there is hope.
Sheldon skimmed over the next steps listed in the WikiHow article. "Two: Become more intimate in non-sexual ways. Three: Pay more attention to her body language. Four: Listen to her tone of voice. Five: Talk about sex. Six: Ask. Wait until you have enthusiastic consent," the page read in the end. "What is sexier, a resigned 'okay' or a whole-hearted 'take me now?'"
Sheldon closed his computer again with painful slowness, his eyes unfocused on something unseen in the distance. All veins in his body seemed closed, a cold sweat settled on his brow, and electric pulses of anxiety and despair coursed through his system. For a moment, his mind was simply completely blank, completely overwhelmed, and then a little voice spoke up and said simply, "You have absolutely no idea, do you?"
Sheldon placed his computer aside, and then stood from his bed, his body shaking from head to toe. He collected the date night minutes, personal social interaction logbook and notebook in a stack with the stethoscope and Rubik's cube on top of his dresser. He opened a drawer, and took out his favorite, red Flash teeshirt, unfolded it, and draped it over all of the objects as one would place a flag over a soldier's coffin. He tucked the edges of the shirt around them all tightly, his hands still trembling, and then retreated with his computer to the living room. He put his computer on his desk, neatly squaring the edges parallel, and plugged it in to recharge. He put away his hacky sack again, hiding it back behind a drawer of clean teeshirts.
Then, Sheldon returned to the laundry room, folding every item with his folding board as he always did, taking the dry and tumbled pieces of cloth and making them smooth, straight, and tight, and as he tossed the panels of his blue board back and forth in this task, he turned out the lights in various rooms in his mind, fastened the windows, closed the doors, and shut it all down.
When he was done, he put his laundry away where it belonged, changed into his Saturday pajamas, and went through the apartment with a can of Pledge and microfiber rag. He dusted behind the books, and then went back and reset all of their edges using a ruler, so that they were perfectly aligned and sitting exactly one inch back on the shelf, and then he cleaned his own desk and then Leonard's, spacing each item on top precisely an alternating one and five inches apart, using his ruler to keep track, cleaning meticulously until the tremors in his body were still.
Finally, Sheldon put everything away, squared the apartment into alignment, and turned the lock on the door to that Leonard could let himself in come morning. He crawled into bed, and lifted one hand and stared at his palm. His fingers just barely shook now, only a little. He exhaled and closed his eyes, and eventually he was overtaken by sleep. He dreamed of laughing hyenas, of burning savannahs, of Amy wearing nothing but a white lab coat, a stethoscope hanging loosely around her neck, while they aimlessly floated along in a row boat on a sunkissed briny sea, each of them at an opposite end, bobbing back and forth on the waves like two children on a seesaw.
Leonard Hofstadter stood in the doorway of the apartment in the early hours of the morning before dawn, looking at his desk top and smelling the lingering scent of lemon Pledge in the air. Slowly, with a strange feeling of dread twisting in his stomach, he closed the door and made his way through the apartment to Sheldon's room, slowly and silently twisting the knob and pushing the door forward to look within. He took a step forward and stood in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest, watching his best friend—the man whom, inexplicably, Leonard loved more than his own brother—whimper in his sleep. He rested his head up against the doorframe and frowned, continuing to watch Sheldon sleep fitfully for several more minutes. Finally, Leonard glanced at his watch and slowly turned towards his own bedroom, the bad feeling in the pit of his stomach refusing to go away.
It had been a terrible drive home; at one point Amy almost had blown through a stop sign, and had had to slam on the brakes to avoid launching herself into the intersection. As a truck pulled through in front of her, Amy had taken a deep breath and told herself firmly, You have got to get a grip, Fowler. Come on.
When she got home, Amy took a long shower, changed into her pajamas, and fastened her hair into a tight bun at the top of her head with an elastic. At first, she went to her harp, standing next to it, plucking a few strings and testing the way the sound made her feel before realizing it was not what she needed.
Instead, Amy went to her dishwasher, and took two glass jars–which had held strawberry jam and applesauce respectively–and carried them to her coffee table. She arranged them next to an empty coffee can and empty tea cup on a saucer, and then placed her statue of three monkeys in front of them. She picked up her coffee can full of change and spilled it all on the table, dropped a cushion on the ground, and curled up cross-legged on the floor on it. She sorted through the change with her fingertip idly, and fished out a quarter. Her eyes moved back and forth between the items before her on the table, and then, with a artful flick of her wrist, she bounced the quarter off the table, off the head of the "say no evil" monkey, against the side of the applesauce jar, and sent it clattering into the jam jar with a satisfying series of tings. She fished out a penny, and sent it pinging off the "see no evil" monkey's face, and watched it do a full double gainer before it landed in the strawberry jam jar. She fished out a nickel and slammed it against the table, letting it hit the "speak no evil" monkey hard, watching it flip high in the air before dropping into the coffee tin.
For over an hour, Amy turned her problems with Sheldon over in her mind as she sorted her change with trick shots off the 3 monkeys. She studied the statue, feeling a strange jab of victory and venom in her stomach every time she pinged a coin off their smug, unchanging faces and sent it plunging into a jar.
She knew where she wanted things with Sheldon to go; sometimes she had a hard time getting her work done and errands sorted out for the time she wasted on romantic reveries about him. This had to stop; she couldn't take it much longer, there were doubts and desires, insecurities and cupidity all niggling away in the back of her brain, and she they were beginning to unravel her usual peace of mind. She trusted Sheldon, absolutely, she knew that with him she had something special that other women only dreamed of and would kill for, no matter if most people couldn't see it. Nevertheless, she had come to that clichéd moment when a woman wants to know where her relationship is going, and Amy shuddered as she realized there was only one way to find out.
She had to ask him directly.
Author's Note: In a reversal of fortune, xMarisolx beta'ed for me. If it arouses any curiosity at all, all the credit goes to her. As always, thanks so much for reading.