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The garage was too warm.
Not objectively. Sheldon knew the temperature was precisely twenty-three degrees Celsius because he’d checked it twice. It only felt warm because Amy was pacing in front of him, flushed with frustration, sleeves rolled to her elbows, speaking with the kind of conviction that made logic sound and seem almost negotiable. Keyword: almost.
“It isn’t always about being technically correct,” she snapped.
“It quite literally is.”
“No, it isn’t!”
“It is if the discussion concerns objective truth.”
She threw her hands into the air.
“You are impossible.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“By everyone, I imagine.”
“Statistically improbable.”
She groaned, abruptly stopping her pacing around the garage. “See? That. You just —”
She stopped herself, pressing two fingers to her temple as though he alone was capable of inducing migraines.
Sheldon opened his mouth to continue dismantling her argument, and to also point out that her inability to do so to him was only further evidence that he had, unsurprisingly, remained undefeated in yet another one of their debates.
Instead, he forgot what he was going to say, as he noticed the pink flesh of her tongue flick across her upper lip. It was a movement so quick that he’d almost missed it. But he didn’t.
Amy stared up at him, brows furrowed deeply.
She was angry.
Her cheeks were a rosy shade of pink, her breathing just a little quicker from the argument. A loose strand of hair had escaped and fallen across her face, and every few seconds she blew at it instead of brushing it away because she was too busy glaring at him.
It was profoundly distracting.
“…Sheldon?”
He blinked. Had she asked him something? He hadn’t heard a word.
“You weren’t listening.”
“I was.”
“You absolutely were not.”
“I was considering your position.”
“No, you were staring.”
He frowned.
“I don’t stare.”
“You were.”
“I was observing.”
She folded her arms.
“There is a difference?”
“Several.”
She waited.
He realised he still hadn’t answered whatever she’d asked.
Instead, his eyes caught on the way the afternoon light was spilling through the open garage door, tracing a pale gold line along the side of her face. Her irises were kaleidoscopes of green, brown, and just a speck of grey, though perhaps unnoticeable to the unobservant eye.
Her hair looked softer in sunlight.
Had it always?
He searched his memory and considered.
It must have.
He’d known Amy for nearly two years.
He’d sat beside her in libraries, science competitions, lecture halls. They’d argued over physics, biology, literature, philosophy. He knew the exact cadence of her laugh, the three rhythmic taps of her pencil against the table she made when she was thinking, and the fact that she preferred green apples despite insisting they were objectively inferior to red ones nutritionally.
So why was he only now noticing…
“…Sheldon.”
Her voice pulled him back.
She was frowning.
“You’ve gone strangely quiet.”
“I am thinking.”
“That’s never reassuring.”
Normally he would have replied immediately.
Instead, he continued looking at her.
She looked… pretty.
The word arrived without permission.
Pretty.
It lodged somewhere in his chest and refused to move. As if on cue, she sucked on her lip again for just a millisecond, and a millisecond too long. There was something so profoundly intimate in this. So unintentionally mind-numbing.
Oh, this is ridiculous.
He didn’t think in words like pretty.
He catalogued symmetry. Proportion. Evolutionary preferences. Statistical attraction.
“Pretty” wasn’t measurable.
Amy sighed dramatically.
“If you’re trying to annoy me by refusing to answer, congratulations.”
She took a step closer, and jabbed a finger lightly against the centre of his chest.
“You don’t get to shut down every time someone disagrees with you.”
Her finger remained there for half a second longer than necessary.
He looked down at it.
Then back at her.
She was still talking.
“…and frankly, I think half the reason you argue is because you enjoy being difficult.”
No.
That wasn’t true.
He argued because precision mattered.
Because definitions mattered.
Because -
Her lips moved as she continued, but he’d already stopped hearing the words.
His heartbeat became annoyingly noticeable, like someone had increased the volume of his own pulse.
Amy frowned.
“What?”
“What?”
“You’re looking at me strangely.”
“I am not.”
“You are.”
“I assure you —”
“Sheldon.”
She tilted her head.
“What is going on with you?”
He should answer.
Instead, his brain supplied another utterly useless observation.
She had tiny freckles across the bridge of her nose.
He had never noticed them before.
How had he never noticed them?
He’d spent hundreds of hours sitting opposite her.
She waved a hand in front of his face.
“Earth to Sheldon.”
Nothing.
She was too close.
Close enough that he could see the faint gold flecks in her brown eyes.
Close enough that she smelled faintly of shampoo and old books.
Close enough that —
Amy’s expression softened.
“…Are you alright?”
“I…”
He had absolutely no idea.
She had never looked at him like that before.
Concern replacing irritation so effortlessly it almost hurt.
Something inside him seemed to snap under the accumulated weight of every conversation they’d ever had, every afternoon spent together, every argument he’d secretly looked forward to because arguing with Amy was somehow the most enjoyable part of his week.
Amy took another tiny step forward.
“Sheldon?”
He didn’t think.
If he’d thought, he never would have done it.
He reached for her wrist.
She looked startled but didn’t pull away.
He drew her the remaining inch towards him.
Her eyes widened.
“What are —”
The question dissolved as he kissed her.
Then, she kissed him back.
Tentatively at first, as though she couldn’t quite believe what was happening.
Then she leaned into him, the hesitation melting away until the kiss became something mutual, something long overdue, as her lips parted slowly and he breathed her in. He felt her hand caress the nape of his neck before grasping softly at his hair as the kiss deepened, while the other tugged carefully at the bottom of his jumper, drawing him in.
He felt it first as pressure, gentle, almost experimental, as her lips answered his, instead of merely receiving them.
It was, rather alarmingly, perfect.
She tasted faintly of the tea they’d shared an hour earlier. Chamomile, he realised through some detached corner of his mind that refused to stop cataloguing observations, even as the rest of him seemed intent on abandoning every rational process he’d ever depended upon.
He felt his breath hitch as he kissed her, then she kissed him back, then him again, and then her, over and over again. He wondered, absurdly, whether he should have been paying closer attention all this time.
When they finally separated, neither of them moved.
Amy was still holding onto his jumper.
He was still holding her wrist, though far more gently now.
She searched his face with an expression somewhere between astonishment and delight.
“You just kissed me.”
“I appear to have.”
“Would you like to continue arguing?”
“…Yes.”
A slow smile spread across her face.
He felt dizzy all over again.
She smiled in a way that made coherent thought abandon him for the second time that afternoon.
It occurred to Sheldon that this might become a recurring problem.
He found, rather unexpectedly, that he didn’t mind at all.