"Yes."
Amy pressed her fingers to her lips, as if trying to catch the word, too late. She should have thought about it, or at least pretended to think about it, or hesitated just for show, but she didn't. What a silly thing to do, when she had known for such a long time that the answer, if the question ever came, would be yes?
Besides, she quite liked the notion of being a little slutty.
Notions were one thing, reality was another. She had said 'yes', and now what? Amy felt as shy as a mouse in a sweater.
Sheldon too seemed to have run out of initiative. He was looking down at her with amazement, breathing fast. Amy half expecxted him to take it back. Just kidding. Gotcha. Instead he said, "yes?"
No? She could end this, and let them both go. No. Bazinga. It was very possible that the night was about to become truly excruciating. "Yes."
So much for that.
"Here." Sheldon rummaged through his bag, pulled out a bottle of wine and shoved it into her hands.
Amy didn't even have time to read the label before he added several bulky scented candles that were strong enough, even unlit, to make her sneeze.
"Sheldon?"
"Wait..." He went on searching, handing her items as he found them, until Amy was worried she was about to drop the whole lot, balancing it with her chin. A box of heart-shaped chocolates, lavender bath oil, what seemed to be a silk pillowcase, and...
"Is that potpourri?" Amy asked.
"Yes, the gas station didn't have any rose petals. And they only had Barry White on a cassette tape." He held up the tape triumphantly.
Amy deposited it all in a heap on the counter. "What is all this stuff?"
Sheldon frowned. "I am trying to seduce you."
"Oh. That's nice." She looked around, but there was really no way to play the tape. "Let's have a drink," she suggested.
"I don't drink."
"You brought the wine," Amy pointed out.
"It's part of the ritual."
Amy shrugged and used a pair of scissors to open the wine. Bits of the cork fell in, but that didn't seem very important. She took a sip straight from the bottle - who's a nerd now, eh? - and a thought occured to her. "Did you get condoms?"
He blushed! God, but the boy could blush! "Yes," he managed to squeak out.
"Are you sure you don't want any wine? It might make things easier."
Sheldon looked down, then up. "Isn't that cheating?"
Could you cheat at sex? Idiot. And yet...he had come to her like a knight to the field, it seemed, willing to do battle, (with himself, if no one else.) There was something in that, Amy found, and she felt the thorny knot of anger and hurt grow a little softer. All she wanted in that moment, terribly, terribly much, was to wrap him in as much kindness as she had to give, and to see if perhaps it might not be returned.
"Let's cheat," Amy said, and handed him the bottle.
Sheldon looked at her, then drank and made a face. "Yuck."
She shrugged, "yeah," and took the bottle back and kissed him. It was a slow, quiet kiss, alone in the world. It was almost familiar now, almost comfortable, and he met her there. She tasted the wine on his lips, bitter-sweet.
They finished about half the bottle. Leaning against the counter and exploring, experimenting. Long kisses and quick ones. His tongue in her mouth and his hands on her hips, pulling her close. I could do this all night.
She had nearly forgotten that that wasn't all, when Sheldon fumbled for the buttons of her cardigan. Oh my. Amy stood still and bit her lip, and let him open the buttons one by one, and then move on to the buttons of the shirt under it, his fingers now skimming against her bare skin.
"Ok?" he asked.
"Ok."
He pushed the shirt and sweater off her shoulders and down, his hands brushing down her arms, and Amy felt a shiver of arousal dance through her body like a flame above a candle. She wondered if he could see it. This, she had never shared with anyone before. Which, come to think of it, was rather the point of the exercise.
Amy smiled, took Sheldon's hand and pulled him towards the old sofa that stood against the wall of the lab. No doubt many a grad-student had caught a nap on it. No doubt they had done other things, too. A proud tradition, she decided. They tumbled onto it together, and Amy reached up to turn off the harsh neon lights. In the faint bluish glow of the computer screens, she could just make out Sheldon's eyes on her. The wine was a soft, not-unpleasant buzz in her head. She could have concentrated and shaken her head and that would probably have dissipated it, but she didn't.
Right. She kicked off her shoes. Tights next. That was a bit awkward and required some contortion. She ended up on top of Sheldon somehow, kissing again. His fingers trailed trough her hair and over her bare shoulders, not confident, but not fliching either, hooking her bra strap along the way. They looked at eachother, serious and absurd, and then Sheldon smiled like he was trying to keep a secret and smoothly unhooked her bra.
Amy blinked. "That went easily."
She felt him shrug. "I have excellent spatial reasoning skills."
"Good point."
There was nothing for it now but to take off the rest of their clothes, really. Amy had been waiting all night - all year, possibly. Or forever - for things to become easy. To be swept away and melt inside and become torrents of lava and leaves on the wind. That wasn't happening, and it now occured to her that it never would.
"Sex is weird," she whispered.
"I believe you're right," Sheldon answered, and he sounded like that was about as good as things could possibly be.
Amy was a little bit drunk and quite turned-on, and pressed against Sheldon in the dark, and she realized that it would still be a choice. Tights. Skirt. Shoes. Shirts. Pants. Moment by awkward moment, each of them a precipice. Condoms. Damn, where were the condoms? A decision with every touch - to share more, know more, show more. Bodies were so odd, so vulnerable. They were tangled together, naked, breathing hard. Strange, intimate, brittle things, these moments, so dense with the things you could share with no one else.
It wasn't perfect and there were no fireworks, but Amy pulled him closer and shifted her hips and for a while there wasn't any space between them to get lost in. It was enough.
~ The End ~
