. . .

The Anniversary Evolution

Year Fifty

It is the mornings that are the worst. Amy's eyelids flutter open and she shifts gently to determine if her hip is actually painful or just still asleep. It is a question she has had to ask herself every morning. First, because her hip has bothered her for years. She thought it was just routine oestoarthritis, but later it was discovered that the joint had been slightly misaligned at some point, most likely during childbirth. The many pains of new mother are so complex that she had not noticed it being more unusually painful than the rest of her abused body or her mind from exhaustion or her heart from holding so much love and terror at the same time. But, now, since her hip replacement three months ago, every day is better, although it is still often stiff first thing in the morning.

As she rolls to relieve the pressure on her hip, her hand brushes something crunchy on the blanket. Lifting her head, she picks up the piece of paper and smiles. This year, as he does every year, he thought of everything. Grateful yet again for her cataract surgeries, she picks each one up slowly from the line they are arranged in on top of the comforter. Six little pieces of yellow paper, one for every book they read together during the past year. No, that is not true. Now that they are both retired, they read many of the same books and discuss them at all sorts of various times. And yet, after all these years, every other month they still pick an official Book Club selection to discuss on the last day of the month.

"I love you more than Roland loved Maud." From Possession, a book Amy loved so much she had no sooner read the last sentence than she started it all over again.

Rolling all the way on her back to pick up the next Post-It, she realizes that she is being watched. He is sitting up, his iBar on his lap, throwing the holotext into the empty space above it, but he is watching her. She looks up at him, his eyes still so very blue. His glasses are gone unless he's reading for a long span of time, just as her's have been, thanks to the latest intraocular lens technologies. "Are you spying on me?"

"Gazing upon you. There's a difference." Still she blushes.

Putting his bar on his end table, turning off the hologram of text as he does, he does not say anything else as she reviews the last notes. She smiles up at him. "Isn't this late for you to be in bed?"

"I like to watch you reading them."

"This place is small enough you could have come in when you heard me moving."

"I am not a spry man of seventy anymore."

Amy chuckles. No, he will turn eighty-five this year. Eighty-five! She does not like to dwell on how old that makes her. Where have the years gone? As if to prove his point, Sheldon begins the slow process of lowering himself back into bed next to her. She is too surprised to ask why, and when he reaches for her, she happily rolls to put her head on his chest.

Sheldon strokes her hair, all white now, but still a few inches below her shoulders just the way he likes it. She braids it every day and usually wraps it into a knot as becoming her elderly status. But here in their bed, it remains loose. "How's your hip?" Sheldon whispers.

"Just still, I think, from sleeping. Some pins and needles, but no pain. It's getting better every day."

"Good."

Considering asking him about his knees or his back or his fingers, Amy decides against it. The ravishes of time have finally caught up to Sheldon, and his knees ache from carrying his height for years and his back aches from his poor posture and slender build and his beautiful long fingers are boney and forever chilled from . . . time. Still, though, she thinks he is the most handsome man she has ever known. Even now, with is his slow, slightly stooped walk, his hair is not completely gray, just salt and pepper. He complained about the cane Ada bought him after he fell on the ice last month, but he carried it with the aplomb of Fred Astaire in the two weeks before he insisted on throwing it in the back of the closet and forgetting about it. Amy knows that if she weren't present anymore, all the old woman in their retirement community would be lining up to throw themselves at him. The idea makes her chuckle again.

"What's so funny?"

"I was just imagining if you were a widower, how you'd have to beat the ladies off with that cane of yours."

"Amy!" He seems genuinely shocked. "Don't say such a thing!"

"What? You don't want to be fawned over?" She is still chuckling.

"No." He squeezes her firmly. "Not that part."

"Oh," she says softly and squeezes his hand back. No, she doesn't want to think about him dying, either.

She shakes off the thoughts of death. Yes, they are in their mid-eighties now, but other than a few relatively mild pains and her recent surgery, they are still healthy. There was brief scare when Sheldon had to take a nitroglycerin tablet for the first time last summer, but it was a false alarm caused by, it seems, a particularly controversial episode of Nova. Of course, she also has the hypertension/hypercholesterol combination of almost all senior citizens, but there is a pill for that. They still have all their mental facilities, and that is the most important thing to both of them.

Instead, looking around their small bedroom, Amy mentally plans her day. It is Valentine's Day, and there is some sort of silly party planned in the dining hall over lunch. They will skip it as that is just the type of thing Sheldon claims to hate, heating up something like soup in their tiny kitchen instead. Then tonight, she will make spaghetti with hot dogs. She even convinced Ada to let her buy Strawberry Qwik at the grocery store last week, appealing to Ada's weakness for her father, and Amy has hidden it away in her dresser of all places to surprise Sheldon with it. She has no choice; their apartment is not nearly as large as their condominium in Pasadena was, and he would find it in a kitchen cupboard. But they do not need the space. Every year, fewer of their old friends travel anymore or pass away, like dear Raj and Stuart, and even Leonard and Penny will stay in Ada's guest cottage.

It is not a complaint. As difficult as it was to down-size and as much as Sheldon fought it, they have settled in here nicely with all the other retired professors. Despite the winters they both have grown to dislike, Ada and Jacob and the grandchildren are close and that is all that matters now. Although they haven't recently because of her hip surgery, they also have the time to travel, and they have seen so many places, alone or with Ada's family. Even here in their new home there are so many activities: chess and game clubs, Lifelong Learning classes, sewing and knitting circles, transportation to all the theatrical and musical events, the list is almost endless. At first, Sheldon would go to campus every morning and putter around his office there, but the times per a week dwindled and eventually he gave it up. Now, he is content to take the bus to have lunch with Ada and a couple of her fellow professors at one of the cafeterias every Tuesday and they discuss science. Sometimes, if the discussion is especially heated, he will call and say he going to the physics department to continue the debate in someone else's office.

Mostly, though, they spend their days together here, just the two of them since their cats passed on and they decided they were too elderly to get more. And how much room do she and Sheldon need anyway? There is still no one else's company she prefers over his, even her daughter's. Not that retirement was not an adjustment for them as they were unaccustomed to the idea of idleness and to being in each other's presence all day long. They had to find new rhythms, but they had already perfected the art of being alone but together in a room. It was just a matter of timing.

And today, this most special day, they will spend it alone together, eating all their meals here instead of the dining hall. It is fitting. They spent that day fifty years ago together, too, never leaving the door of their old apartment.

"'Small enough to fit snugly into their hearts, big enough to protect them, beautiful enough to be a permanent touchstone as they got to know each other. Who are you, how would you, how do you feel, and what is the arc of your moods over an hour, a day, a few weeks? These things they discovered with ease in their heart-sized home,'" Amy quotes, relieved as she is every time she remembers something so well.

She feels Sheldon raise his head. "The Little Paris Bookshop?"

Amy rustles the Post-Its she is still holding in her hand on Sheldon's chest. "November, as I'm sure you remember. I was just thinking it was applicable both to our first apartment and to our current."

Sheldon rubs her back and says, "Fifty years today."

Smiling, Amy tries to burrow closer to him. "Yes. But don't tell Ada."

Next week, Ada has planned a fiftieth anniversary party for them, which Sheldon is already dreading and to which Amy is already looking forward. She even asked Ada to take her shopping for something new to wear, and they are going tomorrow. Amy hopes she can find something in the correct shade of green.

"What were you thinking fifty years ago today?" Amy asks.

"I was trying to figure out a way we could both do laundry and watch your little Valentine's Day movie. It was a Saturday, if you recall," he answers. "But I could tell you had a plan cooked up."

"A plan?" Amy says with a laugh. "You could have asked. I probably would have agreed. I was so nervous all day about making it too romantic because of how much you hated Valentine's Day and because of - well, I promised you no Amorous Activities."

"Not the first or the last time you defied me," Sheldon said.

"Defy you? When have I ever taken orders from you? And you cannot tell me that you have forgotten that it was your idea to go the bedroom."

"Hhmmpphh." But it is soft and gentle, and he angles his head to kiss her forehead. "You vixen."

Amy leans her head back further to met his gaze and they smile softly at each other. The party and the attention next week do not matter as much as they might; they are for Ada and their grandchildren, really. Today, as it always had been, is just their little secret. Even though they do not break their gaze, Sheldon brings a hand up to start brushing along her face, stroking her temple and down her cheek.

Of the ways he has brushed her skin over the years this is . . . one of her favorites. Not her favorite, but also not less than her favorite. She still remembers, with perfect clarity, those heart pounding moments in which his hands and mouth could not seem to get enough of her and the way her skin felt like it was on fire. Now, when they are intimate, it is slower and quieter and not so feverish. It's more carefully orchestrated, necessary bluntness about aches and ranges of motion having replaced euphemisms and pillow talk.

And yet, to be held and stroked so gently, to feel his fingertips upon her skin, to see his eyes looking down at her so intently, as though he's forever surprised she is still there . . . That still feels the same, that still causes the same sigh of happiness down in the very center of her soul. His fingers are so soothing, she wants to close her eyes and be lulled back to sleep. But she does not want to break his gaze. It is the same way he looked at her all those years ago, standing in their old living room, the lip balm lost and forgotten under the sofa -

"How is your hip? Can you make love?" he asks softly. Yes, it is the exact same look. "Do you want to make love?"

"I thought we would tonight, after the movie, after we'd had time to warm up." There is no room for embarrassment now.

"We can," he is still stroking her face, "but I'm, uh, ready now."

Nodding and smiling, Amy says, "My hip feels good. Yes."

And then, there is a moment, when he brushes and kisses her thin and age-spotted skin with so much heat that she feels like she has caught fire, that she knows they will never get enough of each other, no matter how many years remain.

He whispers in the heat, "You are warp drive and the dark side and the light side of the moon at the same time and I think I'm going to combust and I love you so much, my Amy."

She whispers, just before her body pulses the way he has made if for fifty years now, "You set my lambic system on fire and you are green tea and lemon zinger at the same time and I want to go supernova with you and I love you so much, my Sheldon."

Although a different style, the shade of emerald green is close enough. Amy saw Sheldon spying in her while she was dressing after her shower, the pop of his blue eyes around the corner of the door and his shuffle away. When he returns, as she applying her lip gloss, he has changed out of his dress shirt and tie. Not into a Flash tee shirt, because he no longer owns one, but it is his red henley.

"I hope Ada isn't disappointed you didn't dress up for her party," Amy says with a grin.

"But you love it," Sheldon says, coming to stand beside her in the mirror, combing his hair before they leave. "Do you know what your blouse needs?"

"What?" Amy's hand flashes to her chest. She thought Sheldon would love this blouse. And obviously he has understood her, as he changed into his red shirt.

"This." He pulls the small black box out of his pocket and opens the lid for her.

A squeak is the only sound Amy can make at first. Sheldon has not bought her jewelry since her engagement ring, the one that actually came after the marriage. Then she manages to hush, as she bats the tears away with her eyelids, "Oh, Sheldon."

With a little quiver, Sheldon removes the pendant from its velvet bed. It is small, not flashy. But it is perfect: a tiny silver tiara dangles from the chain, each point sparkling with what must be a very small diamond. She watches him struggle with the clasp for a moment, and then she takes it from him. They chuckle that it takes both of them and Amy's strong magnifying mirror to get it in place around her neck.

"You shouldn't have. It's too much," Amy says, looking up at him so he can see the crown twinkle against her neck, Sheldon's hands upon her shoulders.

"You're still my princess." He leans down and kisses her. "Every day for fifty plus years."

THE END-ISH

Thank you in advance for your reviews!

Even though this is the end of this particular story, the Shamyverse as a whole is not finished. There is one more Book Club chapter (The Natural History of Dragons, Reprise) that takes place after this. Please enjoy!