Chapter 3

It was date night. Amy had been looking forward to this day all week. She wanted to spend some time alone with Sheldon, without the whole gang there with them. It was fun seeing the gang, but 4A felt like grand central station sometimes, with various permutations of the group always there. It would be nice to have some uninterrupted time alone with Sheldon. They both seemed more relaxed when everyone else was not around. They could exchange their ideas freely without eye rolls or puzzled looks. They understood each other, in a way that no one else did.

They weren't planning on going out tonight. Sheldon was making dinner at his apartment, and she was going to join him for a quiet evening in. It sounded like heaven after the crazy week that she had at work. Amy found the prettiest dress that she had in her closet and put it on. She was sure that Sheldon would love it.

Amy gazed at the photo she had of him on her bedside table as she brushed her hair. He was so smart, funny and handsome. She really wished that they could progress a little more in their physical relationship. She longed to lightly stroke his face and give him a gentle kiss on the lips. She hoped that he wouldn't back away, but would reciprocate the kiss with her. She could just imagine it now. After dinner, them sitting on the couch….talking, laughing. Sheldon would nervously put his arm around her shoulders. She would lean in closer to him. He would slowly lean down, and softly place a tentative kiss on her lips. She would gently kiss him back.

She gazed at the photo. "Sheldon…all Amy needs is one little kiss." She kissed her finger and lightly pressed it on Sheldon's lips on the photo. She smiled at this photo. She hoped tonight would be magic.

Amy arrived promptly at Sheldon's apartment at seven as she always did for their date night. Amy looked over at Sheldon; he looked so handsome in his button down shirt and khaki pants. It was nice that he had made the effort to look nice for date night also. She hung up her coat and walked over to Sheldon. She tried to gently embrace him in a hug, but he backed away.

"Amy, you know affection is shown at the END of the date not the beginning. You can get your five second hug then. Can't keep your hands off the old Cooper can you?" Sheldon teased.

Amy sighed, this was not starting well. She knew that the impromptu hug was probably not going to go over. Sheldon hated surprises. She walked over to the kitchen island and looked at all the food. "Sheldon, this meal looks amazing. Thank-you so much for cooking."

"Well, as much as I am not overly fond of cooking, I admit it is one of the many areas that I excel in." Sheldon said as he dug into his meal.

"So how did your day go?" Amy enquired.

"Well, I was doing some thinking on supersymmetry." Sheldon began.

"You know Sheldon, I tried mentioning this to you the other day. I was thinking about how a cellular automata approach –"

"Oh Amy, not this again. Your cute math approach might work in the biology world, but the complicated math required for physics, should be left to the heavy hitters."

"Excuse me! You didn't even listen to what I was going to say. I think –"

"-I don't understand. I checked my calendar, and your next cycle isn't due for another 12 days. I'm not sure why you are being so difficult right now." Sheldon muttered.

"I'm not being difficult! You are being dismissive and you are not even hearing me out."

"Amy…Relationship Agreement, Section 5.2 in reference to Date Night. Neither party is allowed to be grumpy or instigate fights during date night."

"I am not being grumpy or trying to instigate a fight. You know what…never mind. Let's change to the topic to your train trip."

"Now you're talking! Trains are always one of my favourite topics of conversation. So what would you like to know about Amy? Steam Engines? Diesels? The Cow Exploder?" Sheldon grinned.

"I want to know what you thought about in regards to us during your train trip." Amy stated.

"Us? What are you talking about?"

"Well when you ran away, you said you needed to think about work, Leonard and Penny moving on, our relationship…the comic book store burning down. I want to know what your thinking was in terms of our relationship."

"Good Lord, this is turning out to be a fun evening" Sheldon sighed. "First of all, I did not run away. I needed some time to myself to think clearly. In regards to us, I am happy to stay on our current trajectory. I just was not ready to move in together. Amy, I thought all of this was clear. I don't know why we have to rehash this all right now."

"Rehash? We never hashed in the first place!" Amy sputtered.

"Hashed in the first place? Amy, that was a really awkward sentence. Are you sure you weren't drinking before you came over here?"

"Argh" Amy moaned as she put her head in her hands. "Yes I'm sure. Sheldon, you really upset me when you left without even telling me. I had no idea what was going on. I feel like you and I are not on the same page about what we want for the future sometimes."

"Geez…is everything about coitus with you?" Sheldon spat out.

"Coitus? This has nothing to do with coitus. If everything was to do with coitus, do you think I'd still be with you four years in, with only an angry kiss on the train between us?". Amy set down her fork. "I want to know if you missed me. I want to know if you thought of me when you were away…"

"Of course I missed you Amy. You are my girlfriend. You wouldn't be my girlfriend, if I didn't care about you." Sheldon said quietly. "I just wish you wouldn't push me so much sometimes…All you do is push and push."

"Push you? You think I'm pushing you?" Amy said with disbelief. She shook her head. "You know what, maybe I am pushing you. I don't want to be stuck in a homeostatic state my whole life. I want to be able to freely hug you, to kiss you, to give and receive affection. I think after four years, that is perfectly reasonable. More than reasonable actually…"

Amy got up from the table and put her napkin down. "I lost my appetite. I think I'm going to head home now."

"But Amy, you didn't even finish your meal" Sheldon protested.

"I think I really just need to go home. I need some time alone to think clearly."

Sheldon gulped at his words being thrown back at him. "Well let me give you our end of date kiss."

Amy put her hand up against his mouth. "That's ok, we can forgo that tonight. Don't worry, I won't make you add that one on to our next date night. Good night Sheldon."

"Good night Amy". Sheldon looked at her curiously as she walked out the door.

Date night had gone horribly wrong. Everything that she had hoped would happen did not. Sheldon had been dismissive and condescending. He didn't seem to think about their relationship at all, or at least he was not willing to talk about it in any capacity. But was she being fair? Was she picking a fight with him from the moment they sat down for dinner? Perhaps she had been. She just had so many emotions bottled up, she was having trouble expressing them to him in a way that was productive.

She needed to talk to Sheldon. She didn't like feeling angry like this, and she wanted them to talk things through rationally. She knew that work was probably not the most appropriate place, but she was hoping they could at least have a short talk and clear the air a little. She looked at her watch, it was lunchtime. He was probably in the cafeteria in the Physics Building. She headed that way.

She entered the cafeteria and saw Sheldon, Leonard, Raj and Howard sitting at their usual table. They did not see her come in. She started walking towards the table, but was blocked by a group of grad students milling around a table in front of them. She was waiting for them to get by when she caught a bit of the guys conversation.

"-Speaking of which, according to a recent study out of Oxford University, when someone takes on a new romantic partner, that person loses one or two close friends." Sheldon stated.

"Since when do you read social science?" Howard asked.

"I go to the bathroom like everyone else" Sheldon replied.

"Why would I lose friends just because I started dating someone?" Raj asked.

"Yeah, you didn't lose anyone when you met Amy." Leonard stated.

"Yeah, well, no, this study refers to romantic partners. Not the way I would categorize the two of us." Sheldon said in a matter of fact fashion.

Amy gasped quietly and moved behind the group of students. She felt like someone had punched her in the stomach.

"You guys kiss and hold hands" Raj said.

"I've seen them do it. It's not romantic." Leonard laughed.

Tears started burning Amy's eyes. Wow, her own boyfriend didn't even think of her as a romantic partner, and their friends thought so too. She needed to get out of there. It was too much. She discretely made her way to the exit. She stood by the door with tears forming in her eyes and gazed at Sheldon laughing at the table with his friends.

"I thought you thought more of us Sheldon" she whispered to herself as she walked out the door.

Barry Kripke was whistling as he walked down to the café in the Biology building. He picked this café because it would be closer for Amy to get there, and they had the best desserts on campus. When he arrived there, he was surprised to see Amy already there. She was sitting at a table by the window, staring out at the rain drizzling against the window. She had a very sad look on her face.

"Amy? I hope I didn't keep you waiting." Barry glanced at his watch.

"No I'm early. I just couldn't concentrate in my lab, so I thought I would come down here."

Barry looked at Amy. She looked positively somber, and her eyes were tinged a bit red, like she had been crying.

"Amy are you ok?" Barry said quietly, as he pulled up a chair across from her.

"Sorry…yes…yes. It's just been one of those days I guess." Amy said softly. She kept looking out the window, not making eye contact with Barry.

"You can tell me what's wrong. Was it that idiot Cooper? I have a hundred and one ways to make him squirm, just say the word."

Amy smiled briefly at the thought. "No..no. It's nothing. Let's just talk about work. Work always makes me feel better."

"If you're sure…" Barry said slowly. He was worried about Amy. She looked positively upset, but it was clear that she was in no mood to talk about it.

Amy launched into speaking about cellular automata modeling in neural networks. She detailed the mathematical modeling she was contemplating in her latest experiments. Barry then told her about the work he was doing in light cone quantization, and the mathematical modeling that he was considering. Soon they were talking about everything from quarks, bosons, fermions, supersymmetry, neurons and synapses. Barry kept asking more and more questions, and they were soon deep in conversation. The hours flew by. He was explaining the finer physics details; she was explaining the biological ones. It became a total meld of the physics and biology worlds, tied together with a mathematical bow.

"Wow Amy, this is a really incredible idea you have. It's just amazing." Barry gleamed.

"Well it's not all me. I just explained my thinking on the connectivity, how it related to light cone quantization was all you."

"Yeah, but I would have never gotten to that point without this discussion. You brought up points that I would have never even dreamed about. Incredible. No wonder you are so famous in the biology world."

"Well math is my bitch," Amy laughed. Barry started snickering at her across the table.

Amy smiled. It was nice that he had truly listened to her ideas and took them seriously. Barry Kripke was a lot different than how he was described to her by the gang. They had described him as a total letch. They detailed him as a subpar annoying physicist, who was more interested in chasing broads than advancing science. She knew before even talking to him, that the subpar description had to be false. He worked at Caltech after all, and Sheldon had been upset earlier that year that his work was leaps and bounds ahead of his. Sheldon was brilliant, so a physicist whose work was better than his? Obviously he must be brilliant also.

As for the womanizer part? Well, perhaps. He could be…she didn't really know him that well. Most physicists she had met tended to be on the quieter introverted side. Barry seemed to be quite a bit more outgoing that the others she had met. All types of people could be attracted to this field, it wasn't fair to pigeon hole everyone into one personality type. That was one learning she took away from last weeks seminar.

Barry gazed at Amy. She looked quite a bit happier than she had earlier. Her eyes sparkled when she spoke about science. He still wondered why Cooper didn't take advantage of that incredible idea. He was typically not one to share on good science.

"So Amy, why didn't Cooper think this was a good idea? I think it's really ground breaking, I'm surprised he wasn't all over it."

"Well, he'd need to listen to the idea first to make that judgement call. A lowly biologist couldn't come up with something that would contribute to his field." Amy said sourly.

Well he had his answer right there. Cooper was being an idiot, as per usual, and pissed off Amy. Well he wasn't going to lose that idea, it was fantastic. He was surprised that Sheldon had been so arrogant though, that he wouldn't listen to his own brilliant girlfriend. PhD in Neurobiology from Harvard….her thoughts weren't going to be some school kids idea. Barry wanted to know more about Amy.

"So what got you interested in Biology?"

She smiled genuinely at Barry. "You are going to laugh when you hear this. Well my mother was always extremely uptight about how ladies should behave. She was forever going on how doing this or that would make people think I was a whore or unladylike. If I wore certain clothes, people would think I'm a loose woman. If I joined certain groups, people would think I'm easy. I heard the word "whore" mentioned so many times growing up, but I never truly understood what it meant. So I went to the library and grabbed a biology book to understand exactly what whores did! That got me initially reading the biology book, but I did really fall in love with the subject when I read the whole text. I've been hooked ever since."

Barry laughed and smiled at her. She was so funny and interesting. He had never quite met a girl like her before. He had to admit, he hadn't spent a lot of time looking for a quality girl. He was more interested in seeing who he could hook up with the easiest. One of the "whores" that Amy's mother feared. Amy was nothing like those girls though. She was easily the smartest woman he'd ever spoken with, but she was also so easy to talk to, and she was very beautiful in a non-showy way. He looked at her eyes. They were a deep dark green colour that was so rare.

"Your eyes are an incredible shade of green Amy. Did you know that it's the rarest eye colour in the world?" Barry said softly.

"Only 2% of the world right?" Amy said.

"That's right. They are really beautiful."

Amy blushed, and tucked her hair behind her ear. "Well enough about me, what's your story Barry Kripke? I have a feeling that there is a lot more to you than I've been told."

"Oh I don't have that interesting of a story. Grew up on the east coast. I had a bit of a rough time when I was younger because of my speech problem and the fact that I was about a billion times smarter than the other kids. My mom ran off when I was a kid with some boyfriend of hers. I never really heard from her since. My dad raised me with about six different step-moms. I didn't really like being home much with the "moms" and their kids so I spent a lot of time at school or in the library. I always loved physics and math. It was like I was playing a game that nobody else understood, but I did. Did my undergrad at Columbia, did my PhD at MIT. I decided to move to California, cause that's where all the hot chicks are…and landed a sweet position at Caltech. I guess that's me in a nutshell."

"I see…so you moved all the way to California for the hot chicks?" Amy teased.

"Where else am I going to meet beautiful green eyed women that can school me in math?" Barry said softly as he gazed at Amy.

Amy's face flushed red, and then she gazed down at her watch. It was seven at night. Had she really spent the last five hours talking with Kripke. "Oh my goodness, it's late, I really need to head home" she said flustered.

"I guess you are right. Let me walk you to your car though. It's quite dark out now."

"Alright. Thank-you Barry." Amy said quietly.

They gathered their things and left the darkened Biology building. Barry had been out with lots of women, but this was the most enjoyable afternoon he could remember spending in a long long time.

A/N: It looks like Barry is starting to fall for our dear Amy. Can Sheldon and Amy patch things up, or do you think things might get worse between them? Will Barry make a play? Stay tuned…