The six friends walked solemnly into the apartment. They were all sharply dressed in their black and blue clothes, mirroring the funeral they had just been to. Tears were still present in the girls' eyes, while the guys all had signs of distress. All but one, that is.
Penny kept her eye on Sheldon, looking for any signs of a crack. He had been unusually stoic this past week, as though the sudden death of his girlfriend hadn't influenced him at all.
The blond knew better.
The way he acted when Amy Fowler was around, she knew. Although he had never told Penny how he felt about the brunette, anyone with eyes could see he had been smitten with her.
The fact he had changed so much when he met her. After their kiss on the train, he had opened up to more. He still wasn't ready to be physical, but he could now kiss Amy without fearing what it meant.
So his reaction surprised all of them.
Leonard also knew his friend. And he knew it was a matter of time.
"So what do we want to order?" Bernadette said, smoothing her navy blue dress as she and her husband walked to the wooden table in the kitchen, her heels clacking lightly. Howard, for once in an actual turtleneck, matched the blue in Bernadette's dress.
"Pizza," Sheldon said, his back to them at the cabinets. The friends agreed.
"Pizza it is," Leonard said and dialed.
The friends all appeared at the table, keeping one eye on their tall friend while making small talk.
Sheldon pulled a bottle of wine out from the refrigerator.
Penny raised an eyebrow.
"Since when do you drink wine?" The other friends looked in his direction.
Sheldon, however, looked at her. "I think a toast to Amy Farrah Fowler is in order." His tone was neutral, almost his natural self. As though he hadn't just lost his girlfriend. Business as usual.
Penny narrowed her eyes and then began to help the tall, lanky man with pouring the beverage. He wasn't fooling her.
He has to be the one to initiate, she thought. I can't push him or he'll shut down. We don't need him running away again.
"Leonard, tell Bernie what you're working on at CalTech," Howard said, diverting the attention. All of the friends desperately wanted to know why Sheldon was acting…well…like a Vulcan. But they knew they had to tread lightly. He was naturally sensitive to these topics.
As the friends engaged in conversation, memories of what happened that day swirled in all of their heads.
Penny had been busy at the Cheesecake Factory thanks to a party of ten that had shown up. She hated her job, but knew the tip would be good.
Feeling her phone buzzing in her pocket, she ducked into the hallway to check her messages.
!ALERT
Explosion at UCLA lab just happened. Multiple casualties. Will keep updated.
END ALERT!
Oh no, Penny thought. That's where Amy works.
The blond sent a quick text to her friend, asking if she was okay. She then shot a text to everyone in her friend group.
Sheldon responded first.
I haven't heard anything from her, he said. Not since an hour ago when she said she'd meet me for dinner.
Penny nodded as though Sheldon could see her. No sense worrying just yet, she wrote. Let's wait and see.
Later that night, the six friends had gathered, along with Stuart, to watch the evening news. Up until then, there had been no word from Amy.
"Fourteen dead in the explosion at the UCLA lab today. Among them was noted neuroscientist Dr. Amy Fowler, 29,…"
And that was all they heard.
Six heads turned to Sheldon, who sat frozen, staring at the screen. When he finally spoke, he had become stone.
"Well," he said quietly. "That's that."
After pizza and wine were consumed, the three friends headed back home, leaving Penny and Leonard to clean up the mess.
Sheldon was surprisingly helpful, however. He put the clean dishes away and the dirty ones in the dishwasher. He wiped the counter down and opened the refrigerator to stock more wine. It was there that he saw some grapes that Penny had bought earlier that day.
"Do we want to do a movie?" Leonard asked his friend and fiancée.
Both affirming, he pulled out the first Star Trek. Penny had actually expressed interest in it and he wanted something that could distract Sheldon.
The familiar theme of the film started when the lovebirds noticed something was wrong.
Sheldon's back was to his friends, as he cleansed the grapes. Suddenly he dropped them in the sink and his head bowed. His eyes closed and his breathing changed.
Leonard looked over at his friend and saw his shoulders quivering. Curious, he raised an eyebrow and walked over to him while Penny paused the movie.
"Sheldon?"
He heard a choked sob as he rounded Sheldon's right side. He saw the man was literally sobbing and gripping the counter.
"She's gone," the taller one said, realization setting in. Leonard wrapped his arms around Sheldon as the man broke down.
"Shhh, it's okay," Leonard said. Penny approached from behind, her expression sad.
"No it's not, Leonard," Sheldon said, sagging into the other man's arms as his knees gave out. The two went down slowly to the floor as Penny joined in wrapping her arms around his middle. Her cheek pressed against the button of his suit jacket, but she didn't care.
"I've lost her."
Penny squeezed her eyes shut as tears rolled down. She rubbed Sheldon's back as she felt it heaving.
Leonard continued to hold the taller man, letting him grieve. He suspected Sheldon cared all along and that he would crack at some point. That his stoic face had just been a shield. Leonard knew his friend. He knew he would crack. He just didn't think it would be now. He honestly thought it would have been the funeral. But even then, the genius was surprisingly calm.
Sheldon choked back a sob and gripped his friends harder. His next words shocked the friends.
"I LOVED her," he shouted.
Leonard and Penny looked at each other knowingly as Sheldon's breakdown became worse.
"I told you," Penny mouthed to Leonard. He nodded.
"I loved her," Sheldon repeated, quieter. "I never got to tell her that."
He felt Penny's arms tighten around him.
"We'd had a fight the night before. I don't even remember what we fought about. She didn't answer me for a while that morning, only around noon to confirm that she would come by so we could talk." Sheldon sniffled as he tried to regain himself. Leonard placed his hand over Penny's.
"I was going to tell her that I was sorry and that I loved her. I planned on getting her favorite food and maybe a new quilting book.
"Within an hour of answering my text, she was dead."
His voice had gone quieter now. Penny placed a kiss on Sheldon's cheek. It was a kiss of comfort.
"I am so, SO sorry, man," Leonard said. Tears fell down his cheek as he wept for his friend.
He knew Sheldon loved Amy, even if this was the first time he heard the confirmation of it. They all knew. The way Sheldon spoke about her. His screensaver. The affection he would see in the other physicist's eyes when he looked at her.
He only wished she had known how truly special she was to him.
Amy had changed his friend, for the better. While he was still an annoying pain in the ass, she had brought out the softer side of him. Things that Sheldon would never admit to Howard or Raj, he would admit to him. He had been slowly warming up to the idea of coitus, something he never thought possible a year prior.
Sheldon had confided in his best friend about kissing Amy; how it made him feel tingly and warm all over. And that she was the only woman he had any romantic interest in.
Leonard knew that this tragedy would destroy his friend. He would never move on from her. Sheldon always worried that Amy would find someone else, someone better. He was trying. He was changing. He wanted to be the man for Amy.
And thanks to that fucking explosion, Sheldon would now reset back to the arrogant asshole that he used to be. Maybe even worse. Because he won't recover. He will dive into science, and possibly even withdraw from the friend group. And even if he doesn't, he'll never truly have his heart in it again.
Sheldon Cooper will be a shell of himself. Leonard was already seeing and feeling it as the handsome taller man fell apart.
"Amy," Sheldon whispered, with a fresh tear running down his cheek.
And in science news, Dr. Sheldon Cooper passed away today peacefully at 101. The Nobel Prize winner was a renowned physicist who proved string theory.
He is survived in life by his nieces and nephews. Dr. Cooper had no children or a spouse as he never recovered from the sudden and tragic death of his then-girlfriend, Dr. Amy Fowler, who perished in an explosion at her lab at UCLA back in 2014.
