(no subject)
Title: Unconfessed
Author: r0semonkey
Rating: G
Word Count: 2,137
Summary: Sheldon wants Penny, but he has Amy.
Prompt: unkissed, unrejoicing, unconfessed, unembraced.
A/N: Greetings, earthlings! This is the third chapter of this series. I hope you guys like it. :)
Part IPart II
‘Mutual indemnification always is,’ I say, and I don’t know why my hindbrain chooses just then to dredge up images of eyes flashing green-grey and blonde hair snapping behind slammed doors. I can be that man if I choose to be, the one to whom romance is a key variable. And if I were in fact to make that choice, I’m all but certain that I would find the security of mutual indemnification romantic.
But I am a man of science, the science of supernovas and spinning galaxies - I will never understand even a fraction of this universe and all its infinity, but I know enough of its beauty to fiercely dedicate myself to its challenge.
I am also a son of the Lone Star State, Texas through and through - and if there’s one thing we want, it’s the challenge of a fight fair and worthy.
(Growing up, I’d always considered testing my mind against the vast leagues of the universe the only fight worth fighting. I have however since reconsidered my position.)
‘That seems rather restrictive,’ Amy says.
I am not yet the other man, and so although something tells me that the next words out of my mouth may hurt Amy, they come out anyway -
‘Feel free to obtain a lawyer.’
As I busy my hands with the notary stamps, I feel her shift slightly beside me, and I recognise the emotion that prickles at me as guilt. I still my hands and look at her, expecting what I’ve come to appreciate - even love - about her, formidable intellect coupled with honesty, wit, and whimsy.
(I also can’t help but remember her slurred speech and unfocussed eyes in the parking lot, the way she’d frowned and clutched at my hand in the car, desperate and unlooking, the grime in her hair and the craving in her voice. I was angry then, because my plans had once again been interrupted, and more so because - this wasn’t Amy Farrah Fowler.)
But this is what she says -
‘Sheldon, who do you see when you look at me?’
- and my heart stutters.
//
‘How do I look, Howie?’
‘Gorgeous, honey.’
‘Really?’ Bernadette pulls her eyebrows together and squints at her husband.
Howard’s serious eyes don’t leave her face, and as he fastens his cuffs, his mouth turns up almost imperceptibly and his jaw clenches.
‘Yes,’ he says simply.
Bernadette beams.
Ten minutes later they’re in their rental car, singing along to Sonny and Cher, when Howard pulls over into a side lane.
‘Really, Howie, here? Now?’ Bernadette scolds.
‘No! I haven’t had time to fix the GPS and I need to check the map, could you pass it over?’
She reaches into the glove compartment and slips out the directory, separating it from the invitation that was resting on top. ‘You don’t have to fix it, you know, you could just call Europcar and ask them to replace it.’ ‘It’s child’s play,’ he dismisses, ‘and besides, you know I don’t speak German as a matter of principle.’ She glares at him affectionately, holding out the directory. ‘The Swedes haven’t spoken German since the Middle Ages, and they speak English here, you know that… Oh, you made a joke. It’s been seven years and you still get me every time!’ He chuckles and takes it from her, flicking through to the bookmarked page while she runs her fingers lightly along the embossed cardstock.
‘I’m glad they made it,’ her girlish voice is quiet. ‘She would have been devastated if it didn’t work out.’
Howard passes the directory back to her and releases the clutch, turning them back onto the main road. His voice is equally quiet as he tells her, ‘so would he.’
When they reach Oslo City Hall twenty minutes later, he parks the car and they meet Raj at the entrance. ‘This is such an ugly building,’ Raj’s expression is incredulous, ‘whatever the architects say about national romanticism and functionalism, it just looks a communist brobdingnagian monstrosity.’ ‘Yeah Raj, because the paisley print of your vest isn’t out to blind us,’ Howard intones dryly. Raj is indignant. ‘I will have you know that this is hand-printed silk, and -’
‘Penny!’ Bernadette’s high-pitched squeal turns a few heads, ‘I love your dress!’ Penny joins them and inclines her head, grinning. ‘We should probably go inside, fellas, Leonard just texted me saying he got us seats and if we don’t get to them immediately, people are just going to run him over.’
They find their seats and a harried Leonard, who blusters that he only managed to stave off a fresh wave of invaders with lactose intolerance-related threats. There is collective nose-wrinkling. ‘Where’s Amy?’ Penny frowns, ‘I can only stab so many people in the foot with my stiletto before they call security.’ Leonard, eyebrows knitted, tilts his chin at her and declares, ‘I fear you.’ She smirks. ‘She should be here soon, just keep swinging your leg back and forth menacingly.’
//
Amy is talking. She’s saying, I forget she’s a woman, and a woman knows when a man looks at her and sees someone else. I keep my expression blank and stare at her. Penny once finagled me into watching The Notebook with her. I must confess, however reluctantly, that I didn’t not enjoy it. There’s a scene where Noah and his war widow are in bed and she says the same thing to him - a woman knows when a man looks at her and sees someone else. I remember Penny crying as the widow cried. ‘Female empathy, Sheldon,’ she’d explained. I wonder if Amy watched The Notebook too or if all women have felt the same thing at some point in their lives, and if that was simply the easiest and most truthful way to express it.
Noah said that he wished he could give the widow what she wanted, but he couldn’t. I didn’t understand him then, but I think I do now.
To model my response on his, however, would be absurd. Amy isn’t the war widow; Amy is Amy, and she is far more special to me than Martha was to Noah. He was discontented; Amy makes me content in many ways. Her intellectual companionship is both stimulating and comforting; she is almost more pragmatic than I am; she is the closest anyone has ever come to being a kindred spirit, if you will; she negotiates with me, explains herself to me, signposts physical contact; she is safe. I trust her. Martha was simply a bedmate, human contact, physical catharsis. Amy and I have a relationship of the mind.
(Yet I cannot deny that Amy craves physical contact; I must equally confess that I don’t. Not because I don’t desire - not because I don’t ache as much or as deep as she does - not because - but because -)
I’ve always thought that Einstein loved Mileva, in his own way. How could he not? Theirs was an intellectual partnership, quite literally a marriage of great minds. She gave her career up for him. But in the end, she realised that he wanted science and that she was an extension of this desire (to paraphrase Penny) - and she left. After that, there was Elsa. Maybe he didn’t love Elsa because he cheated on her so many times.
I realised three years ago that I didn’t want to be Albert Einstein.
I think Spock did love Leila. He fought the hardest against it but I’ve watched This Side of Paradise eighty-seven times, and each time, unsettlingly, I arrived at the same conclusion. For once in his life, he said, he was happy. Yet, for reasons logical but unfathomable, he left her.
I will never admit this to Leonard or the others, but I’m not sure if he made the right choice.
//
‘Sheldon, why do you not like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?’ Penny chews on her Red Vine thoughtfully.
‘Penny, stop shaking your leg. And I don’t understand the question.’
She shoots him a cursory glare but stops shaking. ‘It’s one of my favourite plays and I’ve seen your bookshelf, you have good taste in literature… I’m just wondering is all.’
Sheldon arches his eyebrow pointedly, ‘the only reason you’ve seen my bookshelf is because you thoughtlessly invaded my bedroom to work out your sexual frustrations, although I made it very clear on countless occasions that people cannot be in my bedroom.’ Penny sniggers.
‘What?’
‘Nothing. You’re avoiding my question.’
‘You didn’t ask a question.’
‘Oh Sheldon!’
‘Fine,’ he is the very picture of longsuffering, ‘I’ll tell you.’
He pauses. A moment later he opens his mouth but Penny jumps in before any words come out, ‘Sheldon honey, I’m just wondering. If you’re uncomfortable sharing, it’s totally fine. I understand.’ She smiles softly at him and looks at the images flickering quietly on her TV screen. Understanding that he’s being given a choice, Sheldon fidgets with his hands awhile before chancing a glance at her; she sees him do so at the edges of her vision and quirks her lips gently at the screen.
‘Penny.’
‘Yes, Sheldon?’ She turns to look at him and he turns to look at the screen.
A beat.
‘My brother ran track in college. He held the Galveston record for the hundred metre hurdles. And then one day, the thirtieth of May nineteen-ninety eight, tornado season, our house slipped off the cinder blocks again. He was helping my dad fix it when the porch roof collapsed. His right femur was shattered and he never ran again.’ Sheldon’s index finger traces a non-existent hole on his khaki-covered right knee. Penny bites her lip and looks at his hand. His finger stills. ‘As you’ve surely inferred by now, he took to drinking and silence.’
He pauses, and his next words come out like a Texan winter, rough and unpredictable. ‘Only difference between him and Brick was he ain’t got money or a wife try’na save ‘im.’ Penny’s throat tightens at the sound of his buried accent, and her hand flutters near his elbow’s edge.
He clears his throat. ‘I came home from college in the fall and he wasn’t George Cooper Junior anymore. One night he crashed through my room door, which was locked, if you remember, and flung his crutch at me. He was angry that I was away at college in May, that it wasn’t me that lost a leg. He said,’ Sheldon swallows, and his brother’s voice comes out, ‘I wish t’ hell it was you, you don’ even giv’a damn ‘bout yer legs, yer body, you jus’ wish you was a brain in a jar!’
‘He hasn’t really spoken to me since that night. He also refuses to come visit me here with my mom or with Missy. So, you see.’ He stands up and goes to pour himself a glass of water. Penny’s hand is at her throat as she half-whispers, ‘I’m sorry, Sheldon, I didn’t -’
He puts out a hand to stop her, a gesture familiar enough in other contexts, ‘Penny, I didn’t tell you anything that I didn’t want to. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for my video chat with Amy.’
Don’t go, she irrationally thinks.
‘Kay, say hi to her for me,’ she says.
//
‘Amy, I see you,’ I say, ‘a brilliant, winning mind with a rare wit and a penchant for monkey-rearing and harp-playing. It would be incongruous, not to mention ontologically impossible, for me to look at you and see someone else, unless of course I were subject to consciousness-altering hallucinations, which I am not.’
She turns her body towards me sharply and there is something less dramatic than despair on her face. ‘Sheldon, you may define yourself by your intellect, but I don’t want to be defined by mine. I want to love and be loved, I want to learn my own humanity, in all its weaknesses and the vicissitudes of human emotion. And that includes a desire to have a real relationship, man and woman; not one merely of the mind, as if we were sentient androids, but a physical union as well, a human union.’ She looks me directly in the eye and I’m glad and proud to see that she is contained, eloquent, sure - even while being vulnerable, emotional, and honest. This is the Amy Farrah Fowler I know.
She helps me see things clearly.
‘Amy,’ I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose, ‘I don’t want to be a brain in a jar. I want all those things too.’ My voice is hoarse and I’m not even embarrassed.
She looks down at her hands. ‘But not with me,’ she whispers stoically.
Something courses through me, but I cannot yet identify this emotion. I take her hand in mine.
‘No,’ I say.