Title: you carry it with you
Author: she_burns1
Beta:
muir_wolfPairing: Sheldon/Wil Wheaton
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,677
Summary: Sheldon finally understands, but now he has to carry it with him.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The plot is all mine. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Note: Much love to
muir_wolf, who was kind enough to help out with this. I really sort of consider Sheldon/Wil to be hers, since her story (
Maybe You Should Accept The Loss) is one of the best I've ever read, not to mention it was the first fic featuring them. She gave me the title as well as helped me pick out the little mistakes. All thanks to her! Also, some thanks to Star Trek:TOS episode, 'Amok Time', which this fic references!
It starts like this.
It's something he keeps hidden, locked away in the dark. It's like an action figure you never open, never expose to air, because if you do, its' value will go down dramatically. Not that this has any value.
In fact, this is as far from value as something can get.
--
Sheldon remembers the first time he saw it - 'Amok Time'. Second season, episode thirty, an episode centered solely around his favorite character.
Spock - so logical, so collected - Spock broken down and exposed - bare elements of an individual. A fascinating character study. Part of Sheldon found it vulgar, to think of this man, this being of logic, so lost to lust. Debased like every other creature in existence.
Coitus. Intercourse. Fornication. Sex.
Whatever anyone chose to call it, it always came back to that.
Sheldon did not understand it.
He did not...feel it.
There was no ache inside him, no desperate longings, no stirrings.
He was solid. He was fixed. He was solely thought and thought alone. He was logic. And that was fine with him. It meant he was better than everyone else. It meant he was above them - whether real or fictional. He was a superior being.
But oh, how the mighty fall.
--
Hate and lust are not the same thing.
Not even close.
But they can coincide. They can collide. They can come together and combust.
Sheldon did not know of lust - but he did know of hate.
And he hated Wil Wheaton.
He hated his lying mouth, and his dark eyes, and his patchy attempts at facial hair. He hated his height and the sound of his voice and the way he thought himself so clever. He simply hated the man - through and through, blood to bone.
And Sheldon also hated being bested, which he had been. Twice now (thrice, if you counted the first, non-encounter at the mall). And that simply would not stand.
It took some work, it took some digging, it took more money than it should have, but Sheldon tracked him down - Sheldon found him and when he confronted him - when he saw that know-it-all smirk, he realized he had no idea why he had done what he had done.
He had no idea why he had hunted this man down and he had no idea what to do with him now that he had found him.
Sheldon stood outside his hotel room, arm still raised, three knocks having come and gone, and he stared into the eyes of the enemy, the enemy asking, 'What do you want?' and he, the hero, struggling for a good answer - a logical one.
And then Wil's smirk, if possible, became that much more sinister, "Why don't you come inside. Have a drink?"
The words were coated in absinthe - so seductive, so poisonous - and yet Sheldon found himself walking, feet moving, and then he was inside the web, inside the man's room. He thought he should hear thunder or alarms - warning sounds - sounds of doom. But none came. Instead he just stood in a stark, you've-seen-one-you've-seen-them-all hotel room and there was Wil Wheaton, pouring him a drink.
Everything that came after - the conversations - the remarks - they didn't really matter - not in the long run. All that mattered was how things ended up. How, in the course of time, unexpected events somehow culminated - bumping into one another, sticky atoms clumping, meshing together to form a molecule. A molecule of unprecedented revelation.
Sheldon could scarcely draw breath at the thought of it. In all the myriads of possibilities he could have envisioned, never could he have produced this.
Not this.
Never this.
Never his face pressed against cold sheets, never hands working all over him, never his body humming, trembling, breaking, oh god, the breaking...
Sheldon felt almost as if a part of him had died.
And yet...
And yet...he had not stopped it. He had not asked for it, but he had not...
And it had felt...
Teeth testing his shoulder, ragged breath ruffling his hair, his heart pounding and he was ruined, ruined, ruined. Wrecked.
He had let Wil do whatever he wanted. He had let him...
And he had...
He had liked it.
--
Spock told Kirk that Vulcans did not speak of it among themselves, that it was a deeply personal thing.
Sheldon understands that now.
Sheldon stays silent.
--
It goes like this.
He has a new phone.
A separate phone.
He carries it with him at all times. He leaves it on at all times.
It hardly ever rings, but when it does, he does not hesitate to pick it up.
There is no small talk, there are no niceties. There is just his voice, naming a time and place. And Sheldon always responds with an affirmative, no matter what his schedule, no matter what his plans. He always responds with an affirmative.
He cannot give this up.
--
"It strips our minds from us," Spock told Kirk, "It brings a madness which rips away our...veneer of civilization."
--
Sheldon does his best to stay silent. He does his best not to make noise. It seems...undignified. To moan, to whimper, to carry on the way he had heard Leonard and Penny do in the past.
But sometimes, sometimes...
Wil grabs his hair, tugging hard, and yet one hand gently strokes his cheek, his quivering side, and he's moving above him, almost mechanically, almost restrained and that is not like him. Normally he is unleashed, insatiable, and Sheldon just...lets him.
It's how it is. It's how it works.
But now, just now, he seems almost reluctant.
And then Sheldon hears it. A rasp, a choked voice. His voice.
"Sheldon..."
And he doesn't want to answer. Doesn't want to give him the satisfaction.
Wil tugs his hair harder, says his name again.
Sheldon cracks, just slightly, something like a 'yes' but it doesn't sound right.
"Want to...hear you..."
And this is against the rules. This is something they don't do. But Wil's movements are slowing and Sheldon finally feels it, finally gets it - that aching, that thing every other being in existence has felt but him. Until now. Now he feels it. That wanting, that hunger, that desperate stirring, longing...
Lust.
"Wil..."
It's all Wil needs. He's moving again, quicker, faster than before and now, now that Sheldon has allowed himself to speak, he can't stop. He's babbling, crying out, an incomprehensible mass of noise and lust and then, oh god!, then...sweet, sweet release.
--
Kirk's voice is soft, "I suppose most of us overlook the fact that even Vulcans aren't
indestructible."
He leaves and Spock, alone, says to no one, just as quietly, "No. We're not."
--
It ends like this.
The calls start to come fewer and farther between.
Frankly, Sheldon has done such a good job of keeping it buried, that he has pretty much forgotten all about it himself.
But then, some nights, when he's in bed, he can still feel it.
The ache.
Now that it has been awakened within him, it won't go back to sleep. Instead it crawls, it prowls, it moves through him, just below the skin, waiting to pounce, waiting for release.
But no release is forthcoming and Sheldon does not look for it.
Instead, he finds himself focusing on work and other, mindless, menial things because, really, what else is he supposed to do?
He still hates the man.
That never changed, not even when they were...
He hates him and wants him and hates him some more.
He wonders why, just before the end, Wheaton (Wil, Wil, he had called him Wil just then, just before-) had wanted him to speak. Is that what had ended things? And if so, why? And more importantly - why should he care?
It was all wrong. It was all an aberration. It was all probably some game Wheaton had been playing. Toying with him. Distracting him. Dissecting him.
Sheldon felt as if he had been taken apart, analyzed, and put back together again and the feeling was a combustible mixture of unnatural, infuriating, and worst of all, humiliating.
Wheaton had humiliated him.
No one knew about it - that was his only balm of comfort.
Sheldon would sit in his spot, picking at his tangerine chicken, while the fools (friends) around him would blather on about their peddling social interactions.
Howard would talk about some woman he thought he caught looking at him, Raj would sit there, lips buttoned because Penny was present, Penny would counter that Howard was dreaming and Leonard would look at Penny dreamily, probably wishing that he could catch her looking at him.
None of them would really give him much regard because they usually found his interjections to be tedious and that suited him perfectly, because he didn't feel like talking.
Yet, when the evening reached its' end he would find himself looking at each one of them, wondering idly if any of them would even consider asking something along the lines of how he had been lately.
It was absurd. Even if they did ask, he would give away nothing.
What would he tell them? How could he even begin to explain?
The closest he could come was the idea - the analogy - of a tooth being removed. Deep, throbbing pain, an obvious gap, and his tongue just picking at the center, prodding the wound.
It was something he just had to let go of.
But he found this hard to do, even more so when every night, every time he lay down to go to sleep, he would roll onto his side and look at the phone. The new phone. The separate phone. His phone. The phone that rested there on his beside table, rested, silent and still.
Sheldon would look at it and know that it was never going to ring again.
Not even if he wanted it to.