even land-locked lovers yearn for the sea (kate/penny) pg13

[bebitched]

title: even land-locked lovers yearn for the sea
fandom: lost
character(s)/pairing(s): kate/penny
rating: pg13
word count: 205
prompt: vanadium for femslash100's periodic table challenge (progress 16/30)
spoilers: post-s4
author's note: title from death cab's "brothers on a hotel bed"

summary: kate has a midnight visitor on the rescue boat. 
You dream about rabbit holes. About maps that shift at will and equators that bunch and wiggle off the page. About disembodied teeth that whisper nonsense into your hair. About empty blankets that wail held by ghost hands. You dream that you drown and no one cares.

You wake up to moonlight waxing poetic across the sheets tangled around your legs, to a baby whimpering in the dark, the gentle rock-a-bye sway of the boat. Reality surges into your fuzzy dreamstate and you push it back feebly, but not before it bites in retaliation. Motherhood. Trials. Martyred sinner.

A shadow moves out of the corner of your eye and the door closes.

“Hi.”

Penny offers you water in a plastic cup, filtered, but still tasting faintly of sea cucumbers and weeds. You drink and you don’t ask questions.

You don’t ask when she rests a warm hand high on your shoulder, nearly to your neck, or when she replaces it with her mouth, her tongue. You don’t ask why she’s here instead of in her misplaced lover’s bunk, making up for lost time, or why it’s in your bed (of all people) that she’s chosen instead.

You don’t ask yourself why you don’t stop her.