Author's note: Thank you to my followers who have waited patiently for this continuation and those new followers who have discovered this story. Your encouragement and reviews have given me the boost I needed.
Disclaimer: Yada, yada Bill Prady and Chuck Lorre own it.
" 'cause we got a way of talking and it's better than words.
It's the strangest kind of relationship. Oh, but with us it always works."
Whip Appeal - Babyface
-o-o-
Amy was still not used to using her key so she knocked apartment 4a and braced herself for Sheldon's reaction to her afternoon antics. She had text him that she was on her way and his only response had been that he "would be waiting". On the drive over Amy reconciled that she did not feel remorseful, only slightly embarrassed, after all they were a couple and intimacy came in many forms. She was still uncertain if he would feel pressured and anxious or recognize the playfulness behind her intentions.
"Hello, Amy Farrah Fowler are you here to join the teetotalers club?" his crooked grin and raised brow conveyed a false derision and that made Amy want to play along.
"No, I'm here looking for the speakeasy."
"That would be across the hall." Without responding Amy turned to go to Penny's apartment but was caught by her elbow. "Get in here and explain to me how you managed to inebriate yourself in the middle of the day."
"It was an undiscovered talent, I guess." She quipped as they walked towards the kitchen her mood lightened further as she realized that he was in care giver mode. This was Sheldon at his sweetest and a side most people didn't realize existed unless they observed him catering to her needs in his apartment. "I ate before I knew you would make it back tonight but I can whip up something for you."
"I'd like that." Amy answered unable to restrain a broad smile. Sheldon lost his thoughts as he looked at her but managed to mumble, "um, what would you like?"
"Surprise me."
"Very well."
While he prepared her dinner they shared their day's activities without mention of the phone call. Settling into their usual conversation pattern they bantered back and forth until Amy finished her dinner.
"Sheldon, thank you for making me dinner." She wiped the corners of her mouth and added, "You make the best egg salad sandwiches. I haven't had any that good since I ate them at the Walgreen's counter with my aunt Flora."
"Back in Galvaston my Meemaw used to take me to Foster's drug store. I would always order an egg salad sandwich and crosscut fries. They'd double fry the potatoes to make them extra crispy. Mr. Foster would buy Meemaw's sweet pickle relish so whenever we'd go make deliveries I'd get to eat some sandwiches and follow it all up with a double chocolate shake or a root beer float. The best thing was that if I went with Pop-pop we'd both get an extra scoop of ice cream on our drink called a side-car. "
Watching his shoulders wiggle while he spoke joyfully about his memory made Amy laugh silently. It was exactly like when he spoke of trains ready to burst with joy. She tried to match his spirit with her voice. "That sounds delicious." She rose to clean her dishes and asked, "Did your Pop-pop have a sweet tooth like you?"
"Silly, I don't have a sweet tooth."
Amy turned to face him, her head tilted to the side and she tried to hide her smirk. Just as she was prepared to recite a list of incontrovertible evidence to denounce him he blurted, "Bazinga!"
She chuckled and returned to cleaning the dishes but was given a startle when Sheldon chirped closely to her ear, "I got you!" then added his breathy laugh. He stood next to her in front of the sink standing straight with his chest and chin pumped out with two eyebrows raised as he looked at her, trying to elicit an admission that he had fooled her.
She looked up at him allowing his glow of confidence and whimsy to wash over her, causing her velvety response, "Yes. You. Got. me."
She returned his gaze and while her pauses may have suggested a poor William Shatner imitation her eyes were suggestive of other things. Sheldon who was perplexed by the mixed message, crinkled his brow but remained silent with his uncertainty. Amy put her forehead on his bicep and began laughing, "I'm not good at this, am I?"
"If you intended to imitate Capt. James T. Kirk, it was passable. If you were intending to convey a double innuendo that you are in fact my girlfriend, it to was understood by me so I would give you an A+." He kissed the top of her head before she lifted it to look at him.
"Actually I was trying to be seductive."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. William Shatner, huh?" she shook her head and released a lung full of air, "Not good. I'll have to do some research with Turner Classic movies to improve my form."
"Was that the point of your phone call too?"
"The phone call was about me wanting you with me and I'm not sorry."
"Aaah, another case of no backsies. Then I'm not sorry either and since you seduced me away from my work you get another A+." He pointed to her with his index finger and gave her a closed mouth grin, "And I remembered to get your trophy fixed at that place a few blocks from the university." He loped to his computer desk to retrieve a brown cardboard box.
"Sheldon, I told you not to worry about it when I dropped it last night. It's not something I'm going to put on display."
"It's still a symbol of achievement. I've never been given a trophy I didn't like so if you approve we can display this one here on my mantel." He lifted the trophy from the box and to Amy's befuddlement the topper to the trophy, which was once a golden pool table and player, was replaced by a golden physics atom symbol. Propping it on his shoulder he smiled, "what do you think?"
Amy tossed her dish towel on the counter and walked towards him asking, "What is that?"
"When I saw this at the shop it reminded me of how cute it was for a brain monkey to say you had dabbled with the laws of physics to become champion last night. I thought you might approve of it until -"
"Excuse me. I did not say dabble." She interrupted and the bite of her tone made Sheldon sit down on his desk chair in silence. "I said I calculated equations to determine the correct execution necessary to accomplish my goals. My neurotransmitters functioned properly in order for me to do those calculations and coordinate the fine and gross motors necessary to claim victory. Without our neurobiological makeup nothing we do would be possible."
"Seeing how you derisively use that term brain monkey and how you changed the trophy I see that you once again find the need to demonstrate your disrespect for my field and any of my accomplishments. I don't expect you to have a change of heart in the matter but I hope at some point you will arrive at a level of maturity to applaud the gains in my field and my work as an asset to humanity."
Sheldon barely mumbled, "I – eh" and remained locked to his chair before she started again. "Cute? - Honestly, dabble? Newton's laws, linear and angular acceleration, geometry, trigonometry, friction coefficients, vector notations and properties of equipment are things not noted by people who dabble."
Sheldon's anxiety began to lift as he watched Angry-Amy take a marker to the board where she wrote formulas related to translational kinetic properties. She spoke but wrote quickly and he only half listened as he watched her work. He saw the flare of her nostrils the fire in her eyes and her seductive voice which once sounded hostile changed to professorial. She went through explaining how the different scenarios played out in her mind with her hands in a descriptive frenzy.
"Of course, using the chain rule expression, the power dissipation for the ball rolling up an incline is given by T = …" She continued with diagrams, numbers and cosigns. He began to give her some "What if questions" and she inserted values, erased others without the need to stop to think.
The more she spoke the faster his heart beat and then she began to erase the complete board leaving him with a glistening shine of perspiration on his forehead. The swerve of her hips and jiggle of her backside stirred his hindbrain. It was the side of her he had seen naked even though he half closed his eyes his eidetic memory knew that she had two dimples, one on each cheek just below the waist. He knew that on her lower right cheek she had an au latte birthmark for which he thanked sweet serendipity was shaped like an S. It had been the spot were he had spanked her and the spot he had rubbed after her punishment. He imagined his hand sliding there to caress that spot or his fingers tracing the letter which he deemed marked her for him. If he could have her lay across his lap again that is what he planned to do. His eyes shot open. An epiphany that Amy over his lap with their bathing suit parts practically touching was more than he had originally considered.
Amy turned away from the board to challenge him, "is that enough dabbling for you?" Still mulling over scenes that replayed in his head he responded, "How about when you sunk them all in at once? What considerations did you make then?"
Amy recognized the concerned look on his face but took it to mean that she was showing him up. Without flinching she turned to erase the entire board again galvanizing his attention to her jiggle. Sheldon puffed his cheeks and slowly blew out a breath. Beginning at the nape of his neck a heat was spreading to his ears it felt as if a colony of red ants was marching over his forehead, to his cheeks, down his neck, across his chest, stopping over his heart and then heading down, down to his groin.
He began to feel drained. He swayed a bit from feeling light headed but still relishing the view enough that a goofy smile spread across his face. Amy turned to speak and noticed his odd expression. "Sheldon, why do you have that look on your face?" She spoke softly walking towards him as she intended to touch his forehead to check for fever.
Caught off guard and hearing her throaty voice while gazing into the golden sparkles of her eyes made him blurt out, "Amy, you're beautiful."
She gasped, yanked her hand back to cover her heart. He shook his head and squared his shoulders trying to camouflage the loss of authority he thought he had over his mind and body. He looked her in the eye intending to smile but smirked instead.
"Sheldon Cooper, I can't believe you would employ such a tactic to distract me and avoid the fact that you owe me an apology!" She slammed the marker on his desk. "I'm going to Penny's." She huffed and briskly left the apartment without closing the door.
Confused by the turn of events but certain that he needed to follow Amy he stood placing the trophy box back on his desk. At that moment a notable discomfort in his pants made him pause to adjust the real estate in his briefs. He needed to calm things, well one thing, down before he moved he also needed blood to flow into other areas. "Get a grip Cooper." He tried to think of pandas, comics and breakfast cereal. "okay, that's better." He looked at the whiteboard to admire her recent diagrams and formulas but doing that was like an intravenous drip of Viagra. His arousal returned. "Dear Lord, how am I going to be able to work on that board ever again?" Resetting his mind he began to list the table of elements alphabetically but was interrupted by Raj walking through the doorway.
"I'm done upstairs and I'm ready for game night. Hey why is the door open?"
Sheldon quickly turned and limped to get behind the kitchen island. "Amy just went across the hall and forgot to close it."
"Is she going to play with us?"
"I don't think so. She's not a fan of video games in general but she has played on the Wii and Tetris on my phone."
"Oh. It's just that the other afternoon when we got to the bar she asked for quarters so she could play on a Dragon's Lair machine and that's pretty vintage."
"They had a working Dragon's Lair? Was it version one or two?"
"It was two but she wasn't a very good player so she stopped playing after she spent five dollars."
"hmm. She's never shared that information with me. I'll have to ask her about her hidden video game interests." He had his index finger in his mouth while making a mental note to check on ebay for the disc version of the game. It dawned on him that the conversation had ended the trouble in his pants and he wanted to speak to Amy.
"Raj, I'm afraid I didn't stock up on snacks."
"Do you have some Vitamin water?"
"No."
"Chips?"
"I gave Amy the last to accompany her egg salad sandwich."
"ooooH. I love your egg salad. Do you still have some more?"
"I do, at least enough for a couple of sandwiches."
"Alright, I'll head out to the store and be right back."
As soon as Raj left Sheldon headed to 4b.
Knock, knock, knock, Amy
Knock, knock, knock, Amy
Knock, knock, knock, Amy
He waited and was about to start again when the door opened.
"Sheldon"
"Amy"
She looked at him as he dropped his gaze from her eyes but cautiously asked, "May I?" while signaling for entrance into the apartment. She cleared the path by walking to the couch putting the laundry basket from her hands down on the coffee table.
"Sheldon, When is the last time you were in here?"
He looked around the messy room looking at the clothes, dirty pots, dishes and over flowing trash bin. "It's been nine days. I haven't seen her very much but when I have it's been in my apartment or the hallway. Just add a dozen cats here and we could film an episode of Hoarders."
"It's not as bad as that but it is awful. I picked up all the laundry in her room and now I'm going to get started in here." When she looked back at him, he was right next to her, close enough to feel his breathing on her face when she looked up.
"Why do you think I had ulterior motives?"
She sat on the sofa and he mirrored her actions. "You've never said anything remotely complementary about my attributes like that before and I know you hate to admit when you're wrong so changing the topic would be up your alley."
"This has nothing to do with you thinking that I am wrong. I compliment your attributes all the time but I didn't think that a woman of your intelligence would give any value to flattery."
"I'm more than just a woman of intelligence. I'm many things and it's not flattery I want but recognition, appreciation and respect of my interests." She looked down at her lap to measure her words. It wasn't anger she felt but aggravation and she knew he hadn't acted with malice but she still wanted him to understand that she wouldn't tolerate his condescension. She also knew he was making great strides in their intimate relationship and it was unreasonable to expect everything to happen all at once.
Sheldon's heart beat faster. He wanted to tell her everything. He wanted to tell her that every cell that made her was beautiful. He wanted to tell her that he looked at pictures of her on his phone repeatedly. He was still too guarded to divulge or comprehend the emotions he struggled to suppress but looking at her with her shoulders and head slumped over in a pensive manner made him want to make her happy. He reached for one of her hands resting on her lap.
"Amy, I've never doubted your abilities and I've said many times that your intellect is the only one I've ever found to be on par with mine. I think my appreciation of your mind has been evident since our first meeting and I've shared that with you, my mother and anyone who will listen." After a heavy sigh he continued, "I want you to know that I would dive head first into the humanities for no one but you if it would guarantee that I could express myself better to set your mind at ease. I just don't know how or when to say what I'm feeling." Taking a dramatic gulp he added, "I look upon your countenance to lift my spirit on my darkest days. And I – geesh – I" He shut his eyes and vigorously shook his head from side to side to exclaim, "Dear lord, Amy what are you doing to me?! I can't even listen to myself speak."
Amy tried to stand but he lunged to grasp both of her hands firmly in his keeping her from rising, "No. Let me say this. I need you to know that I think you are beautiful in mind and body. I hate it when you try to change your natural look with all that nonsense that Penny has taught you. You don't need any of it. You were fine from the day I met you." He nodded his head towards her signaling the conclusion of his statement.
Amy began to giggle seeing that his eyes had a mix of puppy supplication as well as Sheldon mortification so she chose to play with him a little before letting him off the hook. "Did you mean fine or fine?" Giving the latter a flirty lilt she wiggled her eyebrows at him.
"You've gone bat-crazy haven't you?" he nodded his head suggesting his expectant answer while he put Amy's hands around his neck then slid his hands down her back urging her closer. "What on earth is the difference?"
"Well let me give you an example." She gave him a peck on the cheek, "that's fine." Then followed with a chaste but lingering kiss on the lips, "and that's fine."
"aaah"
"So which is it?"
"Could you show me again?"
Amy repeated the process then paused to stare at his closed mouth lop-sided grin waiting for a response. "So which is it?"
"Uh, I choose both or the one that gets me out of trouble."
"You're not out of trouble and you still owe me an apology for changing that trophy topper to a physics one."
"No, you did not let me finish. I wanted to say that I bought the physics topper until the correct replacement which I ordered arrives." Opening his eyes wide and raising his eyebrows to their highest position he prodded her by saying, "Now who owes who an apology little lady?"
Unfazed she returned the look. "Are you prepared to recant your derisiveness about neurobiology?"
With a devilish glare he leaned towards her and rubbed their noses together. It amounted to an Eskimo kiss and it confused Amy until he snarked at her saying, "that is neurobiology and this is physics." With that he yanked her towards him and planted and a hard, hungry kiss on her mouth that she thought ended much too quickly.
Sheldon was breathing heavily but was quite pleased with his brashness. "I'm working on it. I'm working on it." Sheldon observed that Amy was silent, her eyes filled with awe and her jaw hung loosely but just as he was about to stand and declare victory, Amy's eyes were set ablaze. The fiery emeralds laser cut through his own eyes as she closed in to capture his lips. His eyes closed of their own accord as a heat spread from her lips throughout his skin. He returned her passion causing his lips to part and she teased him with the tip of her tongue. He responded by tangling his tongue with hers. Instinctively he pulled her closer and then his mind went numb followed by a blanket of euphoria that wrapped him in darkness.
Abruptly Amy put both her hands on his chest and forcefully shoved him into the cushions of the couch as she rose to stand over him.
"And that is neurobiology."
Sheldon's hands went to his chest where she had pushed him but he remained disoriented. Amy stared at his dilated eyes and swollen lips feeling a surge of power and confidence she'd never encountered. His eyes traveled over her body as his breathing quickened. Amy searched for a word to describe his expression and the one she arrived at was desire. Until that moment she'd never known the feeling, so she stood a little taller, rounded her shoulder and smiled.
The smile brought back a moment of lucidity. Sheldon pushed himself up, vigorously shook his head and mumbled his excuse to exit.
"Raj coming, I go."