Author's Note:

I was inspired by a line in The Opening Night Excitation and decided to write something quick. This is meant to be set soon after The Hot Tub Contamination, during Sheldon and Amy's cohabitation trial period. Hopefully everyone is well-versed in famous movie scenes.

As always, a big thank you to my beta reader Stark. As for the rest of you, enjoy and happy Halloween!

Guts

"Okay, everything's ready!" Amy called out from the kitchen.

"Hang on!" Sheldon answered from somewhere in their bedroom. A couple seconds later, he emerged wearing Nitrile gloves and safety glasses.

"Seriously?"

"I'm not like you, Amy," he said. "You work with gross, squishy things every day. You're used to this. I have to protect myself."

"Fine," she said, knowing better than to waste time arguing with him. "Are you going to come over here and do this with me or not?"

"I don't know . . ." he said, taking a few hesitant steps forward but then stopping.

"Come on, you said you would."

"We never put it in writing."

"You already backed out of it last year," she pointed out. "No excuses this time."

"You weren't around for this last year," he grumbled, but moved to join her at the kitchen island.

"Bernadette told me what happened," she explained. "And since now I am around, I'll help you."

Sheldon looked down at the arrangement on the island. Amy had covered the counters in newspaper and set out an array of knives and spoons in various sizes. In the middle of it all were two large pumpkins ready for carving. He looked back over at his girlfriend.

"I'm surprised you're so eager to do this."

"I didn't get to do it much growing up," she said with a shrug. "My mother didn't approve of Halloween. She said with all the sexualized costumes, excessive candy, and demonic undertones, it was a slippery slope towards streetwalking, drug addiction, and devil worship."

Sheldon nodded. That did sound like Mrs. Fowler.

"And I didn't really see much point in decorating when I lived alone," Amy continued. "But now we're here and it seems like fun."

She looked up at him with such an earnest, hopeful expression on her face, even he could read it, and he had no real choice but to acquiesce.

"Alright, just let me put on an apron and we can get started."

Amy waited patiently for a few more moments until he was finally ready, then walked him through the first steps of slicing off the top of the pumpkin. He was doing fine until they had the guts exposed and it was time to hollow it out.

"You can use a spoon to scrape it, but it's going to be easier to pull it out with your hands," she told him. When all he did was stare down into his pumpkin with a grimace, she asked, "Why does this bother you so much?"

"It's yucky," he said simply.

"Okay."

"Not to mention the fall season is completely oversaturated with pumpkins," he rambled on. "It used to be just pies, but now there's pumpkin flavored cereal, pumpkin Oreos, pumpkin lattes . . . So much excessive exposure can only lead to aversion."

"I see."

"Also this is historically inaccurate. The first jack-o-lanterns were made with turnips."

"Would you pull the guts out of a turnip?"

"Of course not."

"Oh, for God's sake, Sheldon!" Amy stepped quickly behind him and brought her arms up around him, placing her hands over his own, still covered in gloves. "We're going to do it together, okay?"

He froze up for a second, surprised by the sudden closeness, but then relaxed.

"Okay."

Their hands moved as one through the hole he'd cut just moments before, their fingers sliding together through the mess inside. Amy started humming a tune he recognized as "Unchained Melody," though he wasn't sure why. Then, as promised, they pulled out handfuls of strings and seeds together.

"I did it!" Sheldon turned back to look at her, smiling.

"Maybe next time you can do it shirtless," she said in a voice low enough he wasn't sure he heard correctly.

"What?"

"What? Nothing." Amy cleared her throat and moved away, going back to work on her own pumpkin, humming once again.