Chapter Three:
Unfortunately for her, this time she didn't wake up first.
She felt two hands shove her to the side in the middle of her sleep, and faintly heard yelling. Slumping to the other corner of the couch, she finally decided to blink open her eyes. For a moment her vision was blurry, but then her eyes adjusted.
Sheldon was standing near the sink, running the water from the faucet and frantically splashing it in his face. She slowly pushed herself up into a sitting position, watching him all the while she began to fully wake up.
"Sheldon, what are you doing?" she asked after a moment.
"Getting rid of the germs." he answered between one of his splashes. "Penny, you drooled on me!"
He suddenly turned to face her, and up until that moment she had forgotten about the drawings she had covered his face with. The only good thing it did was make her completely awake, and she stared wide-eyed in his direction.
"And to imagine that I almost believed you yesterday!" ranted Sheldon, mostly talking to himself. "You are a very hormonal controlled female. Of course you would try and mate with me!"
"Sheldon."
"Why have I been so oblivious?" he continued on, seemingly unaware that she had spoken. "Perhaps this particular flu has somehow done something to my mental state, causing my brain to take longer to completely process situations..."
"Sheldon."
"But why did I so easily accept your excuses?" Nothing was going to stop him. He appeared to have forgotten the fact that he had blown up in her face over the events of the night before. "Dear Lord, I must go see a medical doctor as soon as possible!"
He made for the door, but there was no way Penny was going to let him go outside with the markings all over his face. She moved in front of him, causing him to take an abrupt step back.
"Sheldon, look." she told him, digging from her purse a small mirror and handing it over to him.
He narrowed his eyes, but hesitantly took the mirror and glanced down. She watched as his face contorted dramatically to a look of pure and utter shock. "How...Why...Are you the cause of this...this juvenile prank?" he asked her.
Penny nodded, forcing herself not roll her eyes. "You fell asleep during the movie so I decided to draw on your face. I got tired and fell asleep too, and it just worked out that it was right next to you. That's all that happened, you see. I swear."
He peered at her skeptically for a few moments, his head turned to the side and his chin raised slightly in defiance. "Will this marker wash off?" he finally asked her.
She gulped, not particularly wanting to tell him but knowing it wouldn't be fair to him if she didn't. Besides, it's not like she could have lied, he would eventually find out. "Uh...well...it said it was permanent."
"Penny!"
"I'm sorry!" she apologized defensively. "I didn't realize it until I was done."
Sheldon glared at her. "However am I supposed to remove this graffiti from my face, then?"
Penny wasn't sure what to tell him. She felt bad for putting him in the situation, considering she knew how much things like that bothered him. But, in her own defense, it just seemed like a good idea at the time. And it wasn't like Sheldon didn't deserve a bit of chaos in his life.
That being said, she didn't have any idea how he would be able to manage to get it off. "I could wash your face for you and scrub it really hard...if you want." The offer wasn't much.
He also seemed to know this. "Well, that just makes this whole catastrophe quite peachy, doesn't it? Now that I'm aware you can just scrub it off, I guess I have no fathomable reason to care!"
She stared at him. "Since when do you say the word 'peachy'?"
He blinked, scowling, and sighed dramatically. "You really are hopeless, Penny." he told her. "Now please escort me to wherever you want to make a futile attempt to rid my face of your terrible drawings."
Rolling her eyes and biting back a retort, she pointed in the direction of her bathroom. "This way." she said, a sarcastic cheery tone in her voice. She led the way as they walked toward the hall and finally reached their destination.
"Sit on the edge of the bathtub." she ordered without glancing back, and she could see in the mirror Sheldon looking around, grabbing a towel and wiping the surface of the tub before he dared to sit.
She grabbed a small bath cloth and a bar of soap, finally going over to sit next to him. Turning the faucet on and running the cloth through the warm water, she rubbed the soap through it once and attempted to reach for him.
He flinched back. "Penny, what are you doing?"
She moved a little bit away, her eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Touching your face...?"
"I'm sorry Penny, but no one can touch my face."
She took a deep breath, willing all her patience to help her out in the situation she was currently in. "Sheldon, I have to touch your face in order to erase all the markings, okay?"
There was silence for a moment.
"I'm still sorry Penny, but no one can touch my face."
She stared at him for a while, sitting innocently on the edge of the tub in his robe, his face covered with a fake mustache and goatee. Finally, when she knew he wasn't expecting it, Penny lunged at him.
She grabbed hold of his shoulder with her left hand and brought up her right, holding the cloth tightly in her grip. Feeling him start to protest, she quickly ran it over his face before he could do anything.
"Penny!...What are you doing...? Stop it!...I've changed my mind! It's getting in my eye!"
She finally had to cease her actions when he said that. Moving back, she saw with satisfaction that the black markings look a lot more faded than they did before. That being said, they still weren't completely gone.
Sheldon was frowning at her, his face slightly pink from how hard she had to rub it. "That really was quite unnecessarily brutal." he informed her indignantly. "You have the hands of Tarzan."
"Aw...so you've seen that movie?" asked Penny, too caught off guard to care that he was angry. "I didn't think you knew about anything to do with pop culture."
"When you grow up in the house I did, you are forced to watch completely aimless movies with tasteless plotlines and lack of decent character development." he explained, seeming to want to shudder at the memory. "Like that horrid Mean Girls film you imposed on me."
Penny couldn't help but crack a smile at his serious tone. "What are you talking about? Tarzan was one of my favorites while I was growing up." She hesitantly reached up to scrub his face once more, and was surprised to find that he didn't protest this time. "That and The Little Mermaid."
"Yes. Because it is utterly convincing that a mermaid would, as the silly term goes, fall in love with a human man just simply by looking at him." Sheldon replied, rolling his eyes as he did so. "Complete rubbish, if you ask me."
"Well, it's probably a good thing I didn't." she retorted, chuckling slightly as she wiped his face, this time her movements more gentle than from before. She shook her head. "You really don't understand love, do you, Sheldon?"
He arched an eyebrow, an almost confused expression appearing onto his face. "Of course I do." he answered after a moment. "What's there to understand, exactly? Love is an affectionate emotion humans get toward other humans and occasionally a pet or, quite possibly, themselves."
She shook her head again, this time feeling slightly bad for him. "Oh, honey, you really don't know a thing." She ran the cloth across his cheek. "Tell me, Sheldon, have you ever loved someone?" she asked, mostly just out of pure curiosity.
"I love my mother, and my sister, and I suppose my brother." he answered after a moment of contemplation.
Penny looked at him. "I wasn't talking about that kind of love. I meant, have you ever been in love with somebody before?"
Sheldon laughed, or at least what was considered a laugh for him. It was just his usual half-snort half-chuckle. "Now you're just being absurd, Penny."
"That's so sad, Sheldon." she told him honestly. "Your mind is just so made up, isn't it?"
"Of course. Because I'm right."
She dipped the cloth under the water once more, working on his face again. "Mark my words, one day you'll meet a girl and fall head over heels for her."
He looked confused once again. "But isn't my head already over my heels?" Apparently the popular phrasing had never really reached him that well. "What about heels over head? Now that would be something to converse about."
She rolled her eyes, deciding it would just be best to leave him alone. Instead she leaned back and admired her work. His face was now completely clear of any of the black markings she had put on him the night before, though his skin was still slightly pink.
"You're done." she told him finally, standing up and beginning to put away the things she had pulled out to help her erase the marker. "You know, I think I feel better today than I did yesterday."
He straightened up and stared at himself in the mirror, turning his face from side to side. "I'm afraid your attempt to strike up a casual conversation with me to try and belittle what you did will not work."
Penny only smiled at his paranoia, and walked over to where he stood. "Looks like you caught me, ole' Shelly boy!" she said and, for emphasis, she placed her hands on his shoulder and shook him lightly.
This enticed a scowl from him. "My name is Sheldon, and please refrain from touching me ever again."
"Sure thing, Shelly."