It was a relief when the alarm went off and she could get out of bed. Amy pushed aside the covers and stumbled to her bathroom.

She had slept in Sheldon's shirt again, the one she had gone home in the morning of the breakup. She was not - was not - doing that self-indulgent girly moping thing and holding on to his smell or anything of the sort. She slept in his shirt because she would need to launder it before she gave it back (that was just good manners) and washing things after just one wearing wasteful. Also, it turned out to be more comfortable to sleep in than eleven yards of Canadian flannel. So there.

All right, so she hadn't slept very much. Mostly she had stared at the ceiling, the evening before playing itself over and over in her head and casting a disconcertingly accurate shadow of memory on her skin. So he had kissed her last night. So what? It had taken three years and being tied up. That didn't count.

Sheldon's bright green shirt with it's impenetrable comic-book symbol reflected guiltily in the bathroom. Why not do the girly moping thing? She was a girl, and she could do the girl things, if she wanted. People in romance novels did it all the time, and it seemed terribly sweet and pleasantly tortured. I can do that.

Someone knocked on the door.

Sheldon. She recognized the quick triple knock even before it was inevitably raised to its second power.

Her first instinct was simply to not answer the door. Her second instinct was that he knew exactly when she set her alarm and there was no chance whatsoever that he had arrived coincidentally, and that he was perfectly capable of standing in the hall all day.

Why did I have to live on the fifth floor? Amy wondered, and then she took a deep breath and went to open the door.

"What do you want?"

Whatever Sheldon had been intending to say, he didn't manage. He just looked down at her, fumbling for words. The possibility of standing on tiptoe and wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him flashed through her mind with brutal clarity.

"Ah...I wanted to show you something. And I will need my shirt back - it's the odd-numbered Wednesdays shirt. Which tommorow is."

"All right, a legitimate request," Amy allowed and stepped back to let him in. Sheldon walked past her into the apartment and took a seat on the couch, looking at her expectantly.

Amy still hovered at the door. She would go and get dressed and give him back his shirt, any minute now. The return of all previously exhanged items after a breakup was a staple of romantic movies, after all. There was a protocol to follow here. Then he would be gone and it would all be over with. Right away. She was going.

She sat on the other end of her sofa instead. "What did you want to show me?"

"Well," Sheldon said evenly, "considering recent developments in our relationship, I wanted to offer you a neck massage this morning."

Did he say what I think he said?"Excuse me?"

"It's part of my five-year plan for achieving coitus. A gradual re-structuring of our relationship with defined goals at every stage. Starting with a weekly neck massage. I emailed you a PDF."

Was he serious? Amy stared at him, not sure what to say. She had wanted him to work on his issues, and he was, but this...and five years! It seemed like nothing more than a stalling tactic.

"No five-year plan has ever worked out well," she said.

"To the contrary." He sat back, offended. "Stalin's plans in the 1930s radically restructured the Soviet economy from an agricltural to an industrial basis."

"They also reduced half the Ukrainian peasantry to cannibalism! Is that what you want?" Amy said.

"Pros and cons," Sheldon said. "And mutual nibbling is in the stage slated to commence in November of 2015."

Amy rolled her eyes and turned her back to him. She couldn't bear to look at him any more. If she did, his beseeching eyes would make her agree to his ridiculous plan eventually. "No."

She was about to stand up, stomp off to her bedroom to change her clothes and then fling his shirt in his face and leave for work. Then he stopped her with his hand on her shoulder.

"I thought this was what you wanted," Sheldon sounded baffled, and his hand still lingered on her shoulder.

"It's not just about the sex, Sheldon," Amy said. His thumb was drawing slow circled on the back of her neck. It was incredibly distracting.

"It's not?" He squeezed her shoulders with both hands. She couldn't see his face, but he managed to convey a kind of hopeless confusion in the touch. Where had that been, these past years?

"No. It's not about the sex," she said, but wasn't it thought? Amy didn't pull away. Couldn't. "It's about how you treat me. The things you say. All...all of that." His hands felt so. damn. good. Did he even notice what he was doing to her? "That's why I broke up with you."

His hands froze, suddenly heavy. Amy could sense him go completely still. "You broke up with me?"

"I said, 'goodbye, Sheldon.'"

"Yes, and then you left. That is the common etiquette."

Amy shook her head. He hadn't noticed her breaking up with him. That was so...so...just so...

Well, actually, it wasn't very surprising. Her own fault for not putting it in writing, really. Sheldon couldn't help what he noticed and what he didn't. A tiny spark of something like guilt lit up inside her - enough of life went over his head without her adding to it. She knew. She had watched life go over her head for years. It would be still, if it wasn't for Penny - and Bernadette, and Howard and Raj, and their gag with the online dating profile and...and...well, and Sheldon.

"I see." Sheldon said and leaned away from her. "Well, if you've broken up with me, there's not much use for a five year plan, is there? I still need my shirt back, Amy Farrah Fowler."

She loved it when he used her full name. She had no idea why, she just did.

"Of course, Sheldon," Amy said properly.

At that point, 49% of her was frozen in disbelieving, petrified horror at what she was about to do. 51% would have been too, but 51% was too busy doing it.

"Here's your shirt," she said, and pulled it smoothly over her head. Sheldon had been about to say something, but it died in his throat.

Amy handed him the shirt over her shoulder, without turning. She wasn't wearing anything under it.