Fic: Everything You're Chasing | BBT
Title: Everything You’re Chasing
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2000
Disclaimer: BBT isn’t mine, etc.
Summary: Raj!fic. In which Raj deals with his sexuality, and Sheldon is surprisingly not terrible with helping.
A/N: idk idk. Random fics written at 2am, etc etc. Just something small to, shall we say, get me back in the fic-writing game.
Everything You're Chasing
Raj sits on the couch, a mug of coffee held loose between his hands. His eyes are closed, his head tilted slightly down in contemplation. He almost looks like he’s praying.
There is an easy lie that he has told himself, a lie that sometimes, as he lies in bed, the hours ticking by and he helplessly awake, he brings out and examines, pulling the threads of it to see if he can shake it loose. Sometimes, when one has lived with a lie, when one has carried it in his pocket and paraded it out in front of eager viewers, sometimes it can be hard to let it go.
Raj kissed a girl when he was eight. She’d been laughing and chasing him in the fields, and he’d chased back and pulled her hair and run, grass under his feet and sun hot on the back of his neck. Their parents had been nearby, pulled into quiet conversation, remembering only absently their children running nearby, their shouts and laughter keeping them at ease. As a child, Raj had never squirmed away from girls. He’d played easily with both boys and girls, teasing and laughing and rolling in the dirt with all of them. And then, when he was eight, Asha had let him catch her, laughing with bright eyes and a quick smile, and Raj had kissed her. A childish peck, yes, lips barely pressed to lips and then pulling away already blushing, but he had. And there was a disconnect he had not been expecting.
There’s an ease, there, in wanting something you can’t have. You never have to deal with the reality of it. You can want and dream and lust and imagine, and they can remain perfect sandcastles in the air, because you will never be crushed. Raj has let himself want women for so very long, and he hasn’t spoken to women for longer. He can pretend, most of the time. He can lie to himself.
It’s easier to think of female curves and softness, easier to want and dream, then to face the reality of a woman in his arms, because he can’t ignore, then, that the same flush of attraction, the same pull low in his stomach, is not consigned to women alone. It’s easier to want and get nothing then get and not know what he wants. Because when he’d leaned forward and kissed Asha, and she’d flushed and laughed, he’d thought, fleetingly, longingly, of Asha’s brother.
As he grew older, he was always drawn to quick smiles and soft hair and bright eyes, but it was confusing, so confusing. And when he hit puberty, words stilled in his throat.
It’s been easy, since then, to turn over his precious lie. Easy to tell himself that it’s nerves and lack of confidence and simple intimidation that turns words into air when he sees a woman. And he wishes it were. He wishes it were that simple. Wishes he could cuddle that lie close and make it real, because it would be easier than this. Easier than not understanding.
This morning, Raj had opened the bathroom door, still half-awake and not paying attention. Sheldon had been stepping out of the shower, hair wet, and his pale, skinny body shouldn’t have had any right to hit Raj, low and unexpected and warm. Sheldon had squawked and flailed and Raj had half-run, half-tripped back to Leonard’s old room, heart beating loud in his ears. He’d stayed in there until Sheldon had left, near-cursing, to force Penny into giving him a ride to work. Raj’s ears would surely have been ringing if he’d heard any of Sheldon’s rants and lectures and finally desperate pleas for Raj to hurry because they’d be late for work, but he hadn’t. Raj had been curled up against the wall, staring blankly at his hands, trying to figure out what the hell what the hell what the hell.
Now, as he sits on the couch, his coffee slowly cooling off as he stares at it, he thinks about the physicality of bodies, at the way a woman sits, the way a man leans, the shape of hips and wrists and collarbones. The way skin shades over muscle and bone, the way everyone is made up of the same thing, the way no one is that different from another. He thinks about Penny’s smile, and the way he feels his heart light up at her laugh, and he thinks about the way Sheldon’s rare compliments make him blush. He thinks about Bernadette’s breasts and Leonard’s back, about Amy’s smirk and Howard’s dirty jokes, and he thinks about how they’re all one and the same.
Sheldon comes in quietly, with Raj still leaning forward, blind and deaf to the world outside his head. “Raj?” he asks, a confused lilt to his voice, and Raj drops his mug, his head jerking up as the coffee goes everywhere. Raj starts to stand up, apologies loud on his tongue, but can’t quite manage to push them past his lips.
Sheldon, tsk’ing loudly, has already half-sprinted for the cleaning supplies and slides the table out of the way, unable to hear Raj’s silence over his own lecture and admonitions as he kneels next to Raj’s feet and begins to soak up the coffee. Raj is frozen, stunned, for a long moment, and then half-flees to his room.
It’s almost an hour before Sheldon’s triple-knock interrupts the silence. Raj vainly wishes he could be left alone, but given his actions today he’s sure Sheldon’s next stop would be Penny’s, and he knows she wouldn’t leave until she’d wrung the whole story out of him, alcohol or not. With that in mind, Raj opens the door slowly and carefully.
“I’m sorry,” he says, but the words are soft and barely audible as he looks up at Sheldon. Sheldon with his layers of clothing and his aloof bearing and his few real smiles.
Sheldon takes his time looking him over. “I would remind you of the apartment policy concerning spilled beverages and the removal of privileges and rights, but you have been acting…oddly, today. I find myself almost concerned, if only because you’ve behaved near admirably since you’ve moved in.”
Raj flattens his hand on the back of the door, trying to steady himself. “I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I’ve…”
He can’t seem to think of more words, and he trails off, eyes sliding away from Sheldon’s. After a long moment, in which Sheldon seems to be attempting to stifle a sigh, Sheldon shakes his head.
“I should make you tea,” he says, his voice long-suffering, but before Raj can manage a refusal Sheldon has somehow maneuvered him out into the living room without touching him or even entering his room. The coffee table is still slightly pulled away from the couch, a thin film of carpet cleaner resting atop where he spilled the coffee. “It won’t stain,” Sheldon assures him from the kitchen. “It’s advisable to let the cleaner do its work before finishing, though.”
Raj isn’t concerned with coffee stains, but the slightly damp patches on the knees of Sheldon’s pants when he turns around pull him into knots. He paces back and forth, but when Sheldon is done with the tea and has sat in his spot, he pats the middle cushion meaningfully. “Sit,” he says. “Mind the carpet,” he adds when Raj starts toward the end cushion, and Raj is left sitting next to him. Sheldon’s fingers brush against his when he hands the tea over, and Raj thinks about Penny’s smaller hands and her colored nails.
“I think I might like men,” Raj says, the words half-spilling out of his throat. Sheldon tilts his head slightly to the side, a surprised look on his face, and Raj turns away, leaning his face into his palm and setting the tea down on the table.
Seconds turn slowly to minutes, and Raj can’t bring himself to look at Sheldon. Finally, Sheldon shifts, his curiosity overruling his patience. His hand brushes Raj’s shoulder as he tries to get his attention, but Raj flinches away, and Sheldon’s quick intake of breath is clear evidence that he didn’t expect that.
“Raj,” he says, careful, “Did you flinch because I’m a man and you might like men, or because I’m me, and you might like me?”
“I don’t know,” Raj says. He sounds rather desperate, but he can’t seem to reign in the terror and the confusion. “How do I not know? How am I even supposed to go about knowing? And what does this even mean? And I know I like women. So do I like men too? And how am I supposed to figure that out, shouldn’t I just know?”
Sheldon shifts uneasily next to him, the high emotions in Raj’s voice leaving him hesitant. “You should test your hypothesis,” he says. “This isn’t a field I’m confident in, but Penny has told me that there are many different types of sexuality. Maybe…” He trails off, and Raj can hardly blame him.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought this up to you, I don’t know what I was thinking, I know this isn’t something you’re good with.”
“I’m your friend,” Sheldon says, and there’s something a little firm in his voice. Something almost defensive.
“Sheldon-” Raj says, looking up at him, and Sheldon’s staring at him, blue eyes bright, as if he’s a gauntlet to run. Before Raj can say anything more, Sheldon leans in and presses his lips against Raj’s, careful and wordless and soft. Just a light pressure, and Raj is reminded of Asha, of hesitance and learning. Sheldon’s hand rests on Raj’s leg as he leans in, and Raj’s eyes have fluttered closed, and his heart has sped up, and he has one answer, at least.
One answer, he thinks. An answer.
Sheldon pulls back, his eyes skimming across Raj’s features, his cheeks flushed.
“Why--?” Raj asks, and Sheldon lifts a shoulder, lets if fall.
“Missy once told me,” he says, his hand trembling slightly atop Raj’s leg, “That when you’re someone’s first kiss, you have to be gentle. That you’re responsible for them. That they’ll always remember it, and you have to do it right.”
Raj breathes in, breathes out, breathes in. His cheeks feel warm, his pulse unsteady.
“Thank you,” he says. He tries to smile and can feel how shaky it comes out. “I think that helped,” he says.
His hands are still shaking slightly, and he links them together to try to make them stop. They’re silent for a long moment, and then Sheldon nods his head as if he’s decided something. His hand is light as he settles it on Raj’s shoulder.
“I’ll be right back,” he says.
Raj doesn’t move from where he’s sitting on the couch. It takes him a while to pull his eyes away from his interlaced hands and look around the room.
The world hasn’t ended. Sheldon’s movies are still lined up in careful order, the carpet cleaner is still soaking into the floor, the tea is still steaming slightly on the table in front of him. Raj picks it up carefully and takes a sip. Sheldon just kissed me, he thinks, and he’s torn between laughter and tears.
Sheldon comes back with Penny. Raj knows Penny knows, because when she slips over the armrest to avoid the carpet cleaner, she leans in against Raj and squeezes his hand in her own. Sheldon puts in the first disc of Star Trek: TOS and sits on his other side. He’s cautious and careful and confused, but his hand settles lightly on Raj’s, as if to say nothing’s changed.
Halfway through the second episode, they’ve ended curled up half on top of each other. Sheldon is grimacing but stays silent just this once, and Penny’s laughing at the look on Sheldon’s face and teasing him mercilessly, and Raj curls between them, man and woman. Sheldon’s eyes are bright and Penny’s smile is wide, and it’s easy, he thinks, easy to live a lie, but maybe it’s not necessary, and maybe it’s not as fun, and maybe words are for speaking and mouths are for kissing and lives are to be lived.
Finis
.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2000
Disclaimer: BBT isn’t mine, etc.
Summary: Raj!fic. In which Raj deals with his sexuality, and Sheldon is surprisingly not terrible with helping.
A/N: idk idk. Random fics written at 2am, etc etc. Just something small to, shall we say, get me back in the fic-writing game.
Everything You're Chasing
Raj sits on the couch, a mug of coffee held loose between his hands. His eyes are closed, his head tilted slightly down in contemplation. He almost looks like he’s praying.
There is an easy lie that he has told himself, a lie that sometimes, as he lies in bed, the hours ticking by and he helplessly awake, he brings out and examines, pulling the threads of it to see if he can shake it loose. Sometimes, when one has lived with a lie, when one has carried it in his pocket and paraded it out in front of eager viewers, sometimes it can be hard to let it go.
Raj kissed a girl when he was eight. She’d been laughing and chasing him in the fields, and he’d chased back and pulled her hair and run, grass under his feet and sun hot on the back of his neck. Their parents had been nearby, pulled into quiet conversation, remembering only absently their children running nearby, their shouts and laughter keeping them at ease. As a child, Raj had never squirmed away from girls. He’d played easily with both boys and girls, teasing and laughing and rolling in the dirt with all of them. And then, when he was eight, Asha had let him catch her, laughing with bright eyes and a quick smile, and Raj had kissed her. A childish peck, yes, lips barely pressed to lips and then pulling away already blushing, but he had. And there was a disconnect he had not been expecting.
There’s an ease, there, in wanting something you can’t have. You never have to deal with the reality of it. You can want and dream and lust and imagine, and they can remain perfect sandcastles in the air, because you will never be crushed. Raj has let himself want women for so very long, and he hasn’t spoken to women for longer. He can pretend, most of the time. He can lie to himself.
It’s easier to think of female curves and softness, easier to want and dream, then to face the reality of a woman in his arms, because he can’t ignore, then, that the same flush of attraction, the same pull low in his stomach, is not consigned to women alone. It’s easier to want and get nothing then get and not know what he wants. Because when he’d leaned forward and kissed Asha, and she’d flushed and laughed, he’d thought, fleetingly, longingly, of Asha’s brother.
As he grew older, he was always drawn to quick smiles and soft hair and bright eyes, but it was confusing, so confusing. And when he hit puberty, words stilled in his throat.
It’s been easy, since then, to turn over his precious lie. Easy to tell himself that it’s nerves and lack of confidence and simple intimidation that turns words into air when he sees a woman. And he wishes it were. He wishes it were that simple. Wishes he could cuddle that lie close and make it real, because it would be easier than this. Easier than not understanding.
This morning, Raj had opened the bathroom door, still half-awake and not paying attention. Sheldon had been stepping out of the shower, hair wet, and his pale, skinny body shouldn’t have had any right to hit Raj, low and unexpected and warm. Sheldon had squawked and flailed and Raj had half-run, half-tripped back to Leonard’s old room, heart beating loud in his ears. He’d stayed in there until Sheldon had left, near-cursing, to force Penny into giving him a ride to work. Raj’s ears would surely have been ringing if he’d heard any of Sheldon’s rants and lectures and finally desperate pleas for Raj to hurry because they’d be late for work, but he hadn’t. Raj had been curled up against the wall, staring blankly at his hands, trying to figure out what the hell what the hell what the hell.
Now, as he sits on the couch, his coffee slowly cooling off as he stares at it, he thinks about the physicality of bodies, at the way a woman sits, the way a man leans, the shape of hips and wrists and collarbones. The way skin shades over muscle and bone, the way everyone is made up of the same thing, the way no one is that different from another. He thinks about Penny’s smile, and the way he feels his heart light up at her laugh, and he thinks about the way Sheldon’s rare compliments make him blush. He thinks about Bernadette’s breasts and Leonard’s back, about Amy’s smirk and Howard’s dirty jokes, and he thinks about how they’re all one and the same.
Sheldon comes in quietly, with Raj still leaning forward, blind and deaf to the world outside his head. “Raj?” he asks, a confused lilt to his voice, and Raj drops his mug, his head jerking up as the coffee goes everywhere. Raj starts to stand up, apologies loud on his tongue, but can’t quite manage to push them past his lips.
Sheldon, tsk’ing loudly, has already half-sprinted for the cleaning supplies and slides the table out of the way, unable to hear Raj’s silence over his own lecture and admonitions as he kneels next to Raj’s feet and begins to soak up the coffee. Raj is frozen, stunned, for a long moment, and then half-flees to his room.
It’s almost an hour before Sheldon’s triple-knock interrupts the silence. Raj vainly wishes he could be left alone, but given his actions today he’s sure Sheldon’s next stop would be Penny’s, and he knows she wouldn’t leave until she’d wrung the whole story out of him, alcohol or not. With that in mind, Raj opens the door slowly and carefully.
“I’m sorry,” he says, but the words are soft and barely audible as he looks up at Sheldon. Sheldon with his layers of clothing and his aloof bearing and his few real smiles.
Sheldon takes his time looking him over. “I would remind you of the apartment policy concerning spilled beverages and the removal of privileges and rights, but you have been acting…oddly, today. I find myself almost concerned, if only because you’ve behaved near admirably since you’ve moved in.”
Raj flattens his hand on the back of the door, trying to steady himself. “I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I’ve…”
He can’t seem to think of more words, and he trails off, eyes sliding away from Sheldon’s. After a long moment, in which Sheldon seems to be attempting to stifle a sigh, Sheldon shakes his head.
“I should make you tea,” he says, his voice long-suffering, but before Raj can manage a refusal Sheldon has somehow maneuvered him out into the living room without touching him or even entering his room. The coffee table is still slightly pulled away from the couch, a thin film of carpet cleaner resting atop where he spilled the coffee. “It won’t stain,” Sheldon assures him from the kitchen. “It’s advisable to let the cleaner do its work before finishing, though.”
Raj isn’t concerned with coffee stains, but the slightly damp patches on the knees of Sheldon’s pants when he turns around pull him into knots. He paces back and forth, but when Sheldon is done with the tea and has sat in his spot, he pats the middle cushion meaningfully. “Sit,” he says. “Mind the carpet,” he adds when Raj starts toward the end cushion, and Raj is left sitting next to him. Sheldon’s fingers brush against his when he hands the tea over, and Raj thinks about Penny’s smaller hands and her colored nails.
“I think I might like men,” Raj says, the words half-spilling out of his throat. Sheldon tilts his head slightly to the side, a surprised look on his face, and Raj turns away, leaning his face into his palm and setting the tea down on the table.
Seconds turn slowly to minutes, and Raj can’t bring himself to look at Sheldon. Finally, Sheldon shifts, his curiosity overruling his patience. His hand brushes Raj’s shoulder as he tries to get his attention, but Raj flinches away, and Sheldon’s quick intake of breath is clear evidence that he didn’t expect that.
“Raj,” he says, careful, “Did you flinch because I’m a man and you might like men, or because I’m me, and you might like me?”
“I don’t know,” Raj says. He sounds rather desperate, but he can’t seem to reign in the terror and the confusion. “How do I not know? How am I even supposed to go about knowing? And what does this even mean? And I know I like women. So do I like men too? And how am I supposed to figure that out, shouldn’t I just know?”
Sheldon shifts uneasily next to him, the high emotions in Raj’s voice leaving him hesitant. “You should test your hypothesis,” he says. “This isn’t a field I’m confident in, but Penny has told me that there are many different types of sexuality. Maybe…” He trails off, and Raj can hardly blame him.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought this up to you, I don’t know what I was thinking, I know this isn’t something you’re good with.”
“I’m your friend,” Sheldon says, and there’s something a little firm in his voice. Something almost defensive.
“Sheldon-” Raj says, looking up at him, and Sheldon’s staring at him, blue eyes bright, as if he’s a gauntlet to run. Before Raj can say anything more, Sheldon leans in and presses his lips against Raj’s, careful and wordless and soft. Just a light pressure, and Raj is reminded of Asha, of hesitance and learning. Sheldon’s hand rests on Raj’s leg as he leans in, and Raj’s eyes have fluttered closed, and his heart has sped up, and he has one answer, at least.
One answer, he thinks. An answer.
Sheldon pulls back, his eyes skimming across Raj’s features, his cheeks flushed.
“Why--?” Raj asks, and Sheldon lifts a shoulder, lets if fall.
“Missy once told me,” he says, his hand trembling slightly atop Raj’s leg, “That when you’re someone’s first kiss, you have to be gentle. That you’re responsible for them. That they’ll always remember it, and you have to do it right.”
Raj breathes in, breathes out, breathes in. His cheeks feel warm, his pulse unsteady.
“Thank you,” he says. He tries to smile and can feel how shaky it comes out. “I think that helped,” he says.
His hands are still shaking slightly, and he links them together to try to make them stop. They’re silent for a long moment, and then Sheldon nods his head as if he’s decided something. His hand is light as he settles it on Raj’s shoulder.
“I’ll be right back,” he says.
Raj doesn’t move from where he’s sitting on the couch. It takes him a while to pull his eyes away from his interlaced hands and look around the room.
The world hasn’t ended. Sheldon’s movies are still lined up in careful order, the carpet cleaner is still soaking into the floor, the tea is still steaming slightly on the table in front of him. Raj picks it up carefully and takes a sip. Sheldon just kissed me, he thinks, and he’s torn between laughter and tears.
Sheldon comes back with Penny. Raj knows Penny knows, because when she slips over the armrest to avoid the carpet cleaner, she leans in against Raj and squeezes his hand in her own. Sheldon puts in the first disc of Star Trek: TOS and sits on his other side. He’s cautious and careful and confused, but his hand settles lightly on Raj’s, as if to say nothing’s changed.
Halfway through the second episode, they’ve ended curled up half on top of each other. Sheldon is grimacing but stays silent just this once, and Penny’s laughing at the look on Sheldon’s face and teasing him mercilessly, and Raj curls between them, man and woman. Sheldon’s eyes are bright and Penny’s smile is wide, and it’s easy, he thinks, easy to live a lie, but maybe it’s not necessary, and maybe it’s not as fun, and maybe words are for speaking and mouths are for kissing and lives are to be lived.
Finis
.