Work Text:
This was unusual. He didn’t even like the vacations the university made him take. He wouldn’t even like lunch breaks if they weren’t an existential part of his functioning bathroom schedule. He has never liked abandoning his work, for no matter what reason. So the fact that he was standing here, unlocking the door to his and Amy’s apartment two hours before he usually would return, was more than astounding, most of all to himself. But he just had to tell Amy about a discovery he had made, this couldn’t wait a few hours, and a video call would certainly not suffice. It never properly conveyed how giddy and bouncy she got when she was impressed with his ideas.
Amy was currently working on a paper about her own research and since she did not like writing in her lab, he was sure he would find her at the dinner table, surrounded by her notes, her laptop, and some chocolate she would treat herself to whenever she liked a paragraph she wrote.
As Sheldon opened the door to the apartment, her notes and the chocolate were there, so was her laptop – but she was not. His eyes immediately darted to the bedroom door – it was closed. Maybe she was putting away her clothes, he remembered her mentioning that she wanted to do some laundry today. With a little spring in his step he approached the door and did something Amy had spent hours on trying to explain to him that it would be normal in relationships to do so – he opened the bedroom door without knocking first.
She was in there, but on the bed, leaning against the headboard. She had a blanket covering about half of her right leg, her right hip and just some of her stomach, it didn’t reach up to her bare breasts. It also did not cover the hand between her legs or the flush on her face.
To his own surprise he immediately figured out what it was that she was doing.
“I’m sorry, I need to go to the bathroom real quick,” he uttered as he was already heading there.
In a hurry, Amy collected her clothes off the floor and put them back on, trying to look as neat as possible when he would come back. Panties, don’t rip a hole into your pantyhose, bra, tank top tucked into her corduroy skirt, blouse, vest. She tucked the bed sheets back into place and left for the kitchen to wash her hands since Sheldon was occupying the bathroom. For a moment she considered waiting by the sink until he came back so that he could witness that she did wash her hands after what he saw, but then she decided against it. Whatever the next thing he would see her doing would be, it should not remind him of what just happened.
Something mundane, something that could not be linked to it at all, not even in Sheldon’s mastermind. She looked around the room, thinking. The dinner table with her laptop on it caught her eye and made her sigh with relief. Work. I should get back to work.
Opening her laptop and seeing what time it was on the lock-screen she realized it wasn’t any of his scheduled bathroom times, yet he was taking awfully long. Either there was something wrong with him – which would explain why he was home so early – or he was hiding from her. She could not blame him for that. She was mortified herself, she did not want to imagine his thoughts on it all or what they might lead to. Yet she did, her mind came up with all kinds of possible scenarios, most of them ending with him never wanting to even touch her again.
As he burst into the living room his strategy seemed to be to gloss over it and never to speak about it – he immediately started his monologue on the idea that she now learned had made him want to go home earlier just to tell her. Well, I’ve surely scared him off of ever wanting to do that again. What he told her sure was interesting, but the lingering blush on his face and the higher than usual volume of his voice told her that he was overcompensating.
“Sheldon, wait,” she said, “maybe you can ignore it, but I can’t. Can we at least briefly talk about the elephant in the room? I’m mortified.”
“I’d be scared of an elephant rather than mortified by it, but you do you.”
“Sheldon!”
“Well, I don’t think you should be mortified by anything. After all it was me who burst into what you thought would be time on your own. You live here. You shouldn’t be mortified by doing something people do in their homes.”
That’s surprisingly mature. And not at all what she had imagined. “Thank you Sheldon,” she replied quietly.
“No need to thank me. Will you let me continue now?”
“Sure.” She smiled. “Give me all the details.”
“Amy, I’m not good at coitus at all, am I?”
She set the lotion she had just picked up back onto her nightstand and rolled over to look at Sheldon. He was just sitting there, tucked under the covers. Instead of reading or scribbling something in a notebook as he usually did, he was staring at the wall opposite the bed.
“What? Sheldon, where does that come from? Of course you’re great at it.”
“Well, I can’t be that great. It’s become very obvious that you are not satisfied.”
“Oh my, it seems there is a lot we need to talk about. Shel-”
“Yes. And you should have told me earlier. You should have told me that you didn’t enjoy your birthday presents at all.” He had started out sounding angry, by the end he sounded almost whiny.
“Sheldon-” He did not let her even start her sentence.
“Don’t ‘Sheldon’ me, I should have known that I could never live up to your standards.”
Her own pulse picked up pace by now. “What standards?” It took many, angry beats of her heart until he answered.
“Come on, Amy, you can’t think that I don’t notice every innuendo you make? Plus, I have seen what is on your bookshelves and what you write, the men on TV you find attractive...”
“But-”
“The only reason I can think of why you wait so patiently for the one time a year we engage in coitus is that it simply isn’t good enough for you to want more.”
“Sheldon! Will you please let me say something and explain myself?” Her voice was louder than she had anticipated, but that did not surprise her at all. His blatant refusal to let her speak worked like a catalyst to her reaction to his absurd conclusions.
To her surprise he hushed. “But don’t lie to me,” he said so quietly it almost became a whisper.
It was then she realized that the main reason for his tantrum was not, as she had assumed, that he had found out that he – Sheldon Cooper – might not be the best at something. That it was not solely his ego that was hurt, but something deeper – something much more private, and delicate. His feelings.
“I didn’t,” she paused for a moment, trying to come to terms with actually using words like this in front of him, “masturbate to get any satisfaction that I haven’t gotten from you, quite the opposite.”
He only blinked at her. “I don’t understand.”
“I- I masturbated because I could not get a memory out of my head. I couldn’t get you out of my head, Sheldon.”
He raised his eyebrows, just slightly, and just as slightly tilted his head to the side. “Really?”
“Yes, really. I was craving what we have had, that pleasure, but knowing that I wouldn’t get it from you again any time soon, I did the closest thing to it that I could do.”
if she had not seen it she could have felt how he was looking at her now, contemplating her and what she had said. “Do you… do that a lot?” he croaked.
She gulped, unsure if she should answer truthfully. “If I’m honest, I do.”
“I see.” His attention turned to his hands in his lap, fidgeting with the covers, his shoulders somewhat slumped. The sight jabbed at her heart, painfully.
“I really need you to know that you are not bad at sex. You’re amazing. I orgasmed twice during our first time – after I’ve shown you how, you did most of the stimulation necessary for that. I’ve never heard of another non-fictional man who managed to do that.”
Immediately the corners of his mouth tugged upwards. “Well, I guess that does speak for my qualities.”
“It does. It might be the only way to objectively measure how good you are at it, but there is something else that is far more important to me. It’s the way you make me feel so comfortable during sex, so desired. You’re always so gentle and you always check if something you’re trying is okay with me. I couldn’t come up with anything I’d want you to do differently in bed if I tried.” His soft smile made her heart flutter with joy.
“That is kind of you to say.”
“It’s the truth.” She returned his smile, thinking that this conversation was settled. But then his expression changed to something she could not quite read.
“Amy, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“I have an eidetic memory – when I think of us having coitus, I remember every little detail. The noises you made, what you felt like, how I felt… Well, except for those moments before and during my own climax, the memories of that are somewhat blurry. Anyway, when you think back on the times we had coitus, what is it that you remember? What are your memories like?”
That was a good question. And certainly not one she would have ever expected. Trying hard to keep the looming blush off her face and not to think too much about the implications of him actually remembering everything, she tried to come up with a way to put her answer into words.
“Oh, well, my memories are a lot more diffuse than yours must be. There is a visual component to some of my memories, I do remember how you looked at me and what you looked like, but those images are dominated by what I felt during those moments. The butterflies in my stomach every time you introduce your tongue when we’re kissing, for example. You are an excellent kisser, Sheldon. I also remember very clearly what your lips felt like on my collar bone, or your hands all over me. Sometimes, when I’m alone and can’t get the memory out of my head, I try to trace the paths of your hands with my own to replicate the sensation, but it never lives up to it. Everything else about you that I yearn for I couldn’t even try to replica-”
She was interrupted by Sheldon’s lips on hers. Gently, tentatively he kissed her, just once and pretty briefly before he pulled back.
“I’m sorry, it was rude to cut you off like that.”
“I don’t think it was. I liked it.”
“Good,” he whispered and leaned in again. This time there was more force in his kiss, more conviction. In fact, more force and more conviction than there ever had been in his kisses, it was almost rough. And oh so good. In stark contrast to his lips, one of his hands now gently rested on her waist. Amy suddenly felt her quickening heartbeat much further down than before and reached out for him. She found the button border of his pajama, grabbed onto it and pulled him closer.
He shifted so that his upper body was now directly above hers, slowly easing some of his weight onto her. That was when she felt it. Hard and wide awake against her left hip. In pleasant surprise and without even noticing at first that she did, she squealed into his mouth. She had caused Sheldon Cooper, her Sheldon, to have an erection. With words only.
Her pride rapidly began to fade away as he pulled away and looked at her with so much concern in his face it almost looked like shock. Amy couldn’t tell if it was concern about that squeal of hers – a sound he had not really heard from her before either – or about his own behavior. This truly wasn’t like him at all. Then again, she had praised him. Praised him in a way no one had ever or could ever have praised him before.
After he stared at her quite intensely for a few moments, he leaned in again and went on kissing her as if nothing had happened. His tongue at her lips caught her off guard so much she thought she might squeal again, yet the noise she made came out as a quiet moan.
“Amy,” he breathed against her mouth, then pulled away once more to look at her. “Did you reach orgasm earlier?”
“N- no, I didn’t have the time to, you know…”
“You should not have told me that, you know that I can’t leave things unfinished.”
She rolled her eyes at him. You asked. But then he inhaled as if he wanted to say something, but he immediately looked away and stayed silent for a few moments. He began to fidget with his hands so much she started to worry. Carefully she reached out for his hands to take them into hers.
He inhaled again and suddenly looked directly into her eyes.
“W- would you like to, no, would you let me, would you like it if I… if we finished you off together?”
His gaze was lowered again, he was looking at their joined hands, squeezing hers with an unfamiliar strength. Amy was glad that it hurt a little. It was the only thing reminding her that this was not a dream.
“Sheldon, do you really mean that?”
“I do. Asking you if you’ve orgasmed was a setup. I’ve wanted to make love to you before I knew your answer. But to be fair, it has made the urge stronger. So, do you want to…”
“Of course I do.”
“Good. You can have no idea how much what you said means to me. I intend to make you feel it, though.”
Amy opened her mouth, yet no words would form. Eventually a strangled “hoo” fell from her lips.
“I was hoping you would say that,” Sheldon said with a smug grin as he grabbed onto her waist and pulled her against him.