Fic: Should and Can (Desmond/Penny)
Title: Should and Can
Pairing: Desmond/Penny
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Theirs is an epic love. You can't have an epic love without a bit of drama and schmoop.
Summary: Futurefic. After Penny rescues everyone from the island, she and Desmond have some time alone to talk. Desmond POV. 4400 words.
Notes: This is all supposition about their relationship, dynamic, and especially Penny's personality, based on those scant moments we saw in the season 2 finale. Thanks to elise_509 and ficangel for helping me get Desmond's little sliver of canon straight and for playing the conjecture game with me. (Laura: if I've hijacked anything from your Des/Pen story, I did so unconsciously. But if I did, and it's egregious, let me know and I'll yank it down and fix it.)
I feel like this is highly dangerous and subversive writing, altogether too vulnerable to looking ridiculous as soon as we get any real canon to play with. I'm hoping I'm a good judge of character, but if I’m not, I guess we'll look back on this in a few months and scratch our heads.
Should and Can
How strong when weak to recollect, and easy, quite, to love.
--Emily Dickinson (from an unsent letter to an unknown love)
Penny lay beside Desmond on the hotel bed, clearly unsure if she should touch him. He couldn't say what he wanted, because he didn't know. Or, more accurately, he knew only one thing: if she left the bed, he would in no uncertain terms splinter into pieces.
"I'm sorry," he said, even though it was probably the wrong thing. "It's just…"
He found that words were hard now, not because he'd forgotten how to speak to people, but because the things he wanted to say wove themselves into confusing tapestries of past and present, grief and hope, desire and loss. He often opened his mouth only to find that he had too much to say and not enough of the right sort of words to frame it all properly.
It had been merely a matter of hours since he stepped off the rescue boat to find Penny standing there on the dock. He'd seen her first, known her by her walk before he even saw her face. She was pacing, her hands tapping against her legs. It transfixed him. Everything still seemed unreal, but nothing was as unreal as Penny, walking the length of that pier in a green sweater, gray slacks, and high heels, under a cloudy night sky, everything bathed in orange-toned lamplight. The world he was returning to looked strange and alien enough, and it would grow more so in the days that followed, but at that moment he could really see only her, and it made him want to stop and gaze at her as though she were a sculpture. He feared that if he moved it would somehow break up the illusion, though that didn't make any sense.
In the end, there was no way he could stay on the boat forever, and when he did make what seemed like a huge leap--those two steps down onto the dock--she saw him and she stopped where she was, freezing there with her arms crossed over her chest against the chill. With her stopping, he found himself moving. He didn't remember getting across the pier, only that he did, moving slowly but surely toward Penny, not even knowing if he had any right to hold her. He knew he did, of course; he knew because he'd spoken to her briefly, on the ship's phone, a ship she paid for, an expedition she chartered with one goal: finding him. But her voice had sounded far away and odd--maybe this was all just a desperate grasping for nostalgia, he thought--and then she stood so still that he didn't know how close she would let him get. Could he really lay even as much as his palm on her cheek? Would she feel real? Could he stand close enough to feel her breath on his face and know that she was alive?
She was alive, but she didn't know what he was apologizing for, there in the hotel room, although she replied anyway, as if it might settle something. "I've already told Donald."
"It's not that."
Maybe it had to start this way, with replies that really weren't and with monosyllables. Back on the dock, she'd simply said his name in a broken whisper-his name, like it was a question, when hers for him had never really ceased to be a declaration. So he'd taken one of her hands, shaking and clammy, into both of his and said, "Yeah," and suddenly there were arms around his neck and sobs in his ear and he didn't even like to remember it, because it felt a little like he imagined being shot up with heroin would. It was too much too fast, so good but so confusing. For a few seconds he wasn't sure he felt anything physical. It wasn't until he began to listen to the rhythm of her words of joy-making promises he didn't have to hear to feel-that it really began to hit him, and that was the part he couldn't fathom. That was the thing that, remembering it, made him almost afraid to move: Penny slipping into his arms just like that, after so long he'd been alone, and nothing to prepare him for it. It was like a shock, except it didn't hit him and dissipate. It settled with fire into his bones and made each breath a fight against his ribcage as long as she was in his arms. He was almost glad when she pulled back and asked him if he would come with her, get into a limo and go away from the growing retinue of press and parts of families. He wasn't a survivor, after all, she'd said. The words hung in the air; he knew what she'd meant, but it dug into him anyway and held on. He'd been rescued, but was this really survival, lying on a bed in a hotel room with a woman he'd loved and lost and then loved again in the only way he could anymore: as a memory? He'd always known she was alive somewhere, but to him it was as good as if she'd died. She existed only in his mind, and there she'd been smoothed in places, made rough in others, stretched to suit what she needed to fit and then ultimately boiled down to an essence, one he wasn't entirely sure matched the woman he knew or the one she might have become, living on after this death to him. His Penny had saved him even if she didn't know it. If she didn't know, was she still her?
The Desmond lying on the bed was clean now, having been in the shower earlier, where he thought of how ridiculous it would be if he could wash the island off with nothing more than a jet of water. Penny hadn't wanted to leave him alone, but he'd asked her to, although he pressed the key into her hand and told her to come back when she was done with business. She had his friends to take care of, and he had to find a way to breathe processed air and resist the urge to work his way through the mini-bar. How to proceed: hold onto the island or cling to the new-old world? Was either possible? What would he use to fashion this life? The questions came and went, less coherently than this and too numerous to take hold of him for long. So his brain kept returning to the key in her hand and the fact that he couldn't bring himself to say or do anything but pull on the clean clothes she'd brought for him and lie down. He lay there alone until dawn, thinking and not thinking and still turning that idea of Penny over and over in his mind. Who was she? How was she? Where was she?
The bigger question, the one he thought he saw behind her eyes: was he still her Desmond? God, had it really been years? She certainly couldn't know this man with the long hair and beard and the complete inability to use words properly. They had once been so good at words-spoken in love, spoken in lust, spoken in anger that burned so hot the rest couldn’t help but follow hard and fast in their wake-but now he found them failing. However, something deeper than words, that thing he'd felt when she finally slid into his arms-arms that sometimes didn't feel like his, attached to a body that couldn't be--this thing better than thoughts, touching some instinctive part of him, it must've still been there between them. How else could he be lying there knowing the squeezing in his chest might stop only if he stayed.
Penny lay staring at the ceiling, but he felt her attention on him just the same. She touched him, just her hand on the inside of his wrist, and it didn't make him dissolve like he feared it might. It made his pulse throb.
He tried for the words, finally saying softly, "It's been over five years since I've been with a woman."
She didn't say anything, but her warm palm slid up the inside of his arm, and her voice couldn't quite hide a pity mixed with shock. "But five years ago…"
"No one since you."
He felt something tapping at his heart, then, as if it were made of a tough porcelain that managed to hold despite chips and now cracks. He'd become a master at being stoic and shutting out the world, but he'd never in his life been able to shut out Penny, not even the memory of her. He hadn't even realized he'd been trying until he found his head turning and his eyes taking in the soft, pink flesh of her mouth, the way it curled around words and around sounds and expressions that weren't words but were still things he understood. She was still so kind and so strong, as she always had been, but a deep part of him hadn't quite forgotten that she could believe he would sit in a prison cell and forget she was out there, that he would even be capable of cutting off that flow of words between them, especially then. An even deeper part, though, knew that he'd already forgiven her, probably even before she was in his arms again, smelling so familiar and feeling absolutely real. Maybe it had been when her words found him, even as far away as the island, tucked into that Dickens novel.
He'd spent so many long months alone, and as much as he was grateful to that strange group of survivors for bringing his mind back to reality, he'd done his best not to physically engage with any of them in the few months he knew them. It seemed like a cruel proposition, to feel again, not just in his head where he could put up all the walls he needed but in his broken-down body. His body felt numb to him, but he knew it would be vulnerable to a sudden reversal, sliding into a pain deeper than bones. He remembered Sayid's hands on him when he finally came to from the hatch explosion, how the act of being bandaged was exhausting. When Penny came, he'd fallen into her arms, not knowing what it might do but finding no other alternative. It had made him feel like a human being again, but then, as soon as that human feeling had come, he worked hard to block it out again. It made him hurt so spectacularly that he wasn't prepared to face it.
Now he rolled over to face Penny; he really couldn't avoid it anymore. She turned too, and her hand lay over his heart now, rubbing small circles into the fabric of the t-shirt she'd brought him to wear.
With kind eyes, she said, "You don't have to worry. I didn't intend to seduce you tonight."
He found a smile threatening to steal over his face. He let it, even though it felt strange. "It's morning, almost. And I really thought you did."
"After everything… I wouldn't dream of it. Why would you think I would?"
"I don't know."
"It's not that I've stopped wanting you."
"You haven't seen me in years, Pen. You--"
"You know what I mean."
"Aye," he said with a sigh. "Well…I wouldn't be any good."
"Yes, you would."
"I can't even remember the last time I…" He broke off, impatient and irritated. He hadn't touched himself in weeks. Months. He didn't recall.
Penny tilted her head, smiling. "It's like riding a bicycle. A person never forgets."
She was both playful and sincere, and it made his chest contract with a bubble of mirth. "No, I don't know if it works that way." He paused, watching her eyes, and wondered if he could remember how to let these kinds of words roll off his tongue-light, buoyant, but heavy with promise. But at least the words were coming to him of their own accord now. He raised his eyebrows and added, "But true enough, you never had much in the way of brakes, did you?"
So suddenly it physically startled him, she laughed openly, clutching his bicep. "Not where you were concerned."
Here they were falling back into that smooth banter and innuendo they used to thrive on, especially in public; always promises of things to come. He didn’t think it should be that easy. They hadn't earned it. There was still too much distance of spirit. Or maybe it was just that it made him nervous. Things couldn't be as simple as that. He said: "I just don't think I can do it."
After a long pause, she said, "Des," and it made him hold his breath. This was where she would bring up Donald again, probably to tell him how it didn't mean anything that she had loved him or slept with him. That made his skin crawl, thinking of someone else's hands on her. He'd always hated that thought, even after all these years, but he especially hated it now, holding her again. Of course she would say he could do this. She had never forgotten what it felt like to wake up warm with someone in her arms or feel someone's hands skimming her skin: the curve of her collarbone, the inside of her thigh.
The thought of it bewildered him. He said, "Penny, I can't do this now." He rolled onto his back again.
"Okay," she said calmly, with only a trace of impatience in her voice.
"I'm serious. I know he's your husband-"
"Nearly my ex-husband."
"Whatever he is, I don't want to hear about him. And I told you it's not about him."
She took it in with only a small ripple of guilt. Then he watched something finally and irreversibly turn loose in her as her face became the one he'd seen many times before. It was the one she always had when he dreamed about her, those miserable nights in jail and days in the hatch. It was the one thing he'd never rounded over or exaggerated in his memory, or lost. This was the face of Penny determined.
Her hands, though, had no such insistence about them. He felt them drift up and settle into the hair at his temple while her thumb brushed his cheek. The touch was enough to make his eyes sting with tears, but he held them open and concentrated on the indomitable face peering into his. She said, "Why, Des? I accept that you can't, but you haven't really told me why."
"I don't know how to say things anymore."
"I'm not asking you to say anything. Or do anything for that matter."
"Pen, you bloody well just did, didn't you? And it's not that I don't want to. I do, I think."
"Desmond, you have to tell me what you want me to do. Should I go, or should I stay?"
"Stay."
"I don't know if I can just lie here and not touch you."
He closed his eyes and suddenly wondered why she hadn't just gone, just let him be. Anyone else would've given up by now. "You're touching me now."
She said, "Please, look at me." He opened his eyes slowly until they squinted against the plaintive look on her face, inches from his. She said, "I realize this is hard, and it's beyond strange. But I've finally got you here with me again, and I'm not going to let you…shut down. You can be angry or cold or…ask me a million questions I can't answer, but I won't watch you draw up inside yourself."
"Too late."
She broke at that. "No, it's not." She worked her face into the crook of his neck, into soft, sensitive flesh. "It's not. Tell me it's not, Des." It sent a shiver through him.
"It's not, Pen. It's…" He would fail, he knew, to keep the helplessness out of his voice: "It's just that you've never had cause to see me cry before." Not even the day he'd walked into the prison compound, unable to look back at her.
He felt her tears on his skin, hot and trickling down until they seeped into the pillow under their heads. In the space of a deep breath, he felt her change; it was in the grasp of her hands and the set of her jaw. Her voice might've shook a bit, but it was once again unmistakably that strong voice of the woman he'd fallen eternally in love with: "Well, almighty hell. Will it help if I'm crying my sodding eyes out too? Because I will if you don't fucking let me in."
He'd never had much luck saying no to that voice, and he didn't now. Before he realized what he was doing, or that it was a gesture that spoke well enough that it might have been words, he pulled her into his arms and it shattered him all over again, just like it had on the dock. This was perfect and it was killing him and it was all he could do, just feel her body fitting tight against his as she held onto him. Her long blonde hair had fallen over his face, and her fingernails made marks on his shoulders and neck, but he didn't care about that or that his arm under her was beginning to fall asleep. He just held her there and cried and listened to the sound of her sniffling in his ear. It hurt, but it wasn't as strange as he'd feared it would be.
After a long time, he felt her chuckling into his neck. "I think we've made everything soggy." She pulled herself away just enough to examine the pillow, still laughing to her herself. Her laugh was one of the first things he'd ever noticed about her, and it was the chief thing he'd never quite been able to picture or hear in his mind once he wasn't with her anymore. It was a musical laugh, but deep and throaty too, and it made her both classy and gorgeous yet utterly real, somehow at the same time.
She really came into focus for him then. Her hair was lighter than he remembered, but still long and thick, and he could smell shampoo in it, something faintly sweet, nothing that he remembered. She was wearing a dark green camisole, having thrown the sweater over the chair by the window, and that green brought out the range of her hazel eyes, as did the red lines in them and the glitter of tears.
He said, "God, you're so beautiful."
Predictably, she looked sheepish and shook her head, wiping her eyes, "I'm a blotchy mess."
"I don't care," he replied seriously. Then it took his breath away to see it cross her face: the need she'd been hiding since they finally got to be alone together. This was why he'd been guarding against her from the start, but although his knee-jerk fear seemed ridiculous to him now, he felt the words come out of him anyway: "I still don't think we should."
She raised her eyebrows. Clearly part of her still wanted to hold back, but the other part recognized that even if he was fragile, he was at least open now. She said, "So now it's a question of should, not can?"
His shoulds had always been a constant source of annoyance for this woman who lived by can. In the worst of times it had shot things through with too much fire, but it had more often made for the best sort of balance, where one tempered the other and they were both stronger. That they had stumbled upon it again made him smile, and he said, "No, it's a question of can in the worst possible fashion."
"Des, don't tell me you've forgotten about the first time we had sex…"
In response to his grimace, she laughed, and she turned over and fit herself back against his body. She probably didn't even recognize that she was doing what she'd always done early in the morning, to see if he was ready and willing, or if she could make him so. The curve of her shoulder and the feel of her back resting against his stomach and her thighs flush with his own made him wonder about the daylight lingering on the edges of the curtains. This was normal. This was okay. He was allowed to laugh. Really, their first time had been rather a lovely disaster, so much so that it had become their own personal myth.
As he let a finger trace a pattern up and down her arm, he summoned some counterfeit grouchiness and re-entered that old conversation. "It wasn't entirely my fault we never made it to the bed."
"Well, what you lacked in coordination, you always did make up for in…enthusiasm." He watched her face over her shoulder, how her jaw held in the smile even though her chest heaved with a little silent laughter.
More amused than anything, he said, "Do you really think making fun of me is the way to get into my pants, love?"
She rolled over to face him again, suddenly wide-eyed and serious. "No, no. God. I didn't mean-"
"It's okay, Pen," he said soothingly. "It would only wound me if I'd ever got any complaints."
"None." He felt her legs twining through his, but she didn't press as close as she could, just close enough that he would feel her there. "I meant what I said. I didn't bring you here to get you to make love to me. If you're not…" With a tilt of her head, a smile, and raised eyebrows, she said, "Well, it's probably healthy. And I'm too glad to have you back. I'm too…" She took a deep breath as tears welled up in her eyes again. "I'm still a little overwhelmed that you're really alive. And you don't hate me."
"I don't. And I'd say you have reason to be angry with me too, sailing off when I should have never let you go."
"God, Desmond. I didn't give you any reason to stay." She paused, letting her arm rest across his ribs, so that her fingertips could make tiny circles over his back. "I knew from the second you came off the boat that it was possible you'd want me again. I didn't know when I spoke to you on the phone, but I knew when I saw you. It scared the hell out of me."
"Me too." He didn't tell her all the reasons why-why he forgave, why he still loved, why it did indeed scare him a lot more than he'd thought possible. There was still the matter of who she was and who he was, and whether those people fit together, stripped of long-gone pasts and spackled over with separate lives, neither of which was anything less than messy.
With a pinched smile that battled her tears impressively, she let out a sigh and said, "So…right now, this morning, I want you in any capacity I can have you: clothed or unclothed, up to and including the quickest, messiest sex in the history of the world."
"We've already done that, haven't we, love?"
"We never did find your other sock," she said with a shake of her head. Then her eyes shifted again. She'd always been the temperamental sort, but it never ceased to amaze him how quickly her moods could turn on a dime, and how obviously it showed on her face. Running her hands over his beard, she said, "I know we can't pick up where we left off. I want you to know that. I get that. I don't understand what it means yet, whether this thing is even possible, but I'm not trying to just erase everything and go back to the beginning. There's no way to do that."
"I know. You're just trying to…"
"What?"
"I can't say what I mean. But I know what you're doing, and I understand."
"I thought we probably needed to just be together for a while. Alone and away from all the…insanity."
"So you really hadn't planned on seducing me?"
Shaking her head with a light swell of laughter, she replied, "No."
"Would you mind very much if I kissed you, then?"
Seriously, she said, "One question: am I allowed to try for more?"
It had taken him a lot of thought to decide he should kiss her; sex seemed like it might be too much--an attempt at a quick fix, one that could backfire spectacularly. But he knew there was no real way this could be any more complicated than it already was, and he realized he wanted this, now that he was here with her, so close to her. Maybe it seemed like such a foregone conclusion because it was obviously what they needed.
So he said with an even smile, "I would be quite disappointed if you didn't. But I make no promises about-"
Her lips crushed against his before he could finish, effectively knocking those worries-and all thoughts-from his dizzy brain. God, she tasted so good, like he remembered. Her mouth was hot and soft, and her wet lips pulled at his lightly at first, then harder, delving deeper. This was different; she kissed differently, and at first it was altogether too much sensation, especially as he was processing the memory and the reality together now. After a moment, though, he felt himself melting into her, like he always had. Lost to the world.
Then it took him by surprise: he felt himself trying to shut out all this feeling again, even after she'd managed to coax his stubborn soul open again. Forcing every muscle in his body and every tight fist in his heart to let go, he made his jaw relax, and she pressed herself even closer to him, fitting their bodies together until he found that his hands practically danced over her skin, too filled with possibility to know what to do first. He had barely figured out how to talk to her again. He had no idea how he might make love to her, but the possibility wasn't so scary anymore. He kissed her through tears, secure in knowing she was there to keep a strong hold on him, on them both, no matter what came next.
Pairing: Desmond/Penny
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Theirs is an epic love. You can't have an epic love without a bit of drama and schmoop.
Summary: Futurefic. After Penny rescues everyone from the island, she and Desmond have some time alone to talk. Desmond POV. 4400 words.
Notes: This is all supposition about their relationship, dynamic, and especially Penny's personality, based on those scant moments we saw in the season 2 finale. Thanks to elise_509 and ficangel for helping me get Desmond's little sliver of canon straight and for playing the conjecture game with me. (Laura: if I've hijacked anything from your Des/Pen story, I did so unconsciously. But if I did, and it's egregious, let me know and I'll yank it down and fix it.)
I feel like this is highly dangerous and subversive writing, altogether too vulnerable to looking ridiculous as soon as we get any real canon to play with. I'm hoping I'm a good judge of character, but if I’m not, I guess we'll look back on this in a few months and scratch our heads.
Should and Can
How strong when weak to recollect, and easy, quite, to love.
--Emily Dickinson (from an unsent letter to an unknown love)
Penny lay beside Desmond on the hotel bed, clearly unsure if she should touch him. He couldn't say what he wanted, because he didn't know. Or, more accurately, he knew only one thing: if she left the bed, he would in no uncertain terms splinter into pieces.
"I'm sorry," he said, even though it was probably the wrong thing. "It's just…"
He found that words were hard now, not because he'd forgotten how to speak to people, but because the things he wanted to say wove themselves into confusing tapestries of past and present, grief and hope, desire and loss. He often opened his mouth only to find that he had too much to say and not enough of the right sort of words to frame it all properly.
It had been merely a matter of hours since he stepped off the rescue boat to find Penny standing there on the dock. He'd seen her first, known her by her walk before he even saw her face. She was pacing, her hands tapping against her legs. It transfixed him. Everything still seemed unreal, but nothing was as unreal as Penny, walking the length of that pier in a green sweater, gray slacks, and high heels, under a cloudy night sky, everything bathed in orange-toned lamplight. The world he was returning to looked strange and alien enough, and it would grow more so in the days that followed, but at that moment he could really see only her, and it made him want to stop and gaze at her as though she were a sculpture. He feared that if he moved it would somehow break up the illusion, though that didn't make any sense.
In the end, there was no way he could stay on the boat forever, and when he did make what seemed like a huge leap--those two steps down onto the dock--she saw him and she stopped where she was, freezing there with her arms crossed over her chest against the chill. With her stopping, he found himself moving. He didn't remember getting across the pier, only that he did, moving slowly but surely toward Penny, not even knowing if he had any right to hold her. He knew he did, of course; he knew because he'd spoken to her briefly, on the ship's phone, a ship she paid for, an expedition she chartered with one goal: finding him. But her voice had sounded far away and odd--maybe this was all just a desperate grasping for nostalgia, he thought--and then she stood so still that he didn't know how close she would let him get. Could he really lay even as much as his palm on her cheek? Would she feel real? Could he stand close enough to feel her breath on his face and know that she was alive?
She was alive, but she didn't know what he was apologizing for, there in the hotel room, although she replied anyway, as if it might settle something. "I've already told Donald."
"It's not that."
Maybe it had to start this way, with replies that really weren't and with monosyllables. Back on the dock, she'd simply said his name in a broken whisper-his name, like it was a question, when hers for him had never really ceased to be a declaration. So he'd taken one of her hands, shaking and clammy, into both of his and said, "Yeah," and suddenly there were arms around his neck and sobs in his ear and he didn't even like to remember it, because it felt a little like he imagined being shot up with heroin would. It was too much too fast, so good but so confusing. For a few seconds he wasn't sure he felt anything physical. It wasn't until he began to listen to the rhythm of her words of joy-making promises he didn't have to hear to feel-that it really began to hit him, and that was the part he couldn't fathom. That was the thing that, remembering it, made him almost afraid to move: Penny slipping into his arms just like that, after so long he'd been alone, and nothing to prepare him for it. It was like a shock, except it didn't hit him and dissipate. It settled with fire into his bones and made each breath a fight against his ribcage as long as she was in his arms. He was almost glad when she pulled back and asked him if he would come with her, get into a limo and go away from the growing retinue of press and parts of families. He wasn't a survivor, after all, she'd said. The words hung in the air; he knew what she'd meant, but it dug into him anyway and held on. He'd been rescued, but was this really survival, lying on a bed in a hotel room with a woman he'd loved and lost and then loved again in the only way he could anymore: as a memory? He'd always known she was alive somewhere, but to him it was as good as if she'd died. She existed only in his mind, and there she'd been smoothed in places, made rough in others, stretched to suit what she needed to fit and then ultimately boiled down to an essence, one he wasn't entirely sure matched the woman he knew or the one she might have become, living on after this death to him. His Penny had saved him even if she didn't know it. If she didn't know, was she still her?
The Desmond lying on the bed was clean now, having been in the shower earlier, where he thought of how ridiculous it would be if he could wash the island off with nothing more than a jet of water. Penny hadn't wanted to leave him alone, but he'd asked her to, although he pressed the key into her hand and told her to come back when she was done with business. She had his friends to take care of, and he had to find a way to breathe processed air and resist the urge to work his way through the mini-bar. How to proceed: hold onto the island or cling to the new-old world? Was either possible? What would he use to fashion this life? The questions came and went, less coherently than this and too numerous to take hold of him for long. So his brain kept returning to the key in her hand and the fact that he couldn't bring himself to say or do anything but pull on the clean clothes she'd brought for him and lie down. He lay there alone until dawn, thinking and not thinking and still turning that idea of Penny over and over in his mind. Who was she? How was she? Where was she?
The bigger question, the one he thought he saw behind her eyes: was he still her Desmond? God, had it really been years? She certainly couldn't know this man with the long hair and beard and the complete inability to use words properly. They had once been so good at words-spoken in love, spoken in lust, spoken in anger that burned so hot the rest couldn’t help but follow hard and fast in their wake-but now he found them failing. However, something deeper than words, that thing he'd felt when she finally slid into his arms-arms that sometimes didn't feel like his, attached to a body that couldn't be--this thing better than thoughts, touching some instinctive part of him, it must've still been there between them. How else could he be lying there knowing the squeezing in his chest might stop only if he stayed.
Penny lay staring at the ceiling, but he felt her attention on him just the same. She touched him, just her hand on the inside of his wrist, and it didn't make him dissolve like he feared it might. It made his pulse throb.
He tried for the words, finally saying softly, "It's been over five years since I've been with a woman."
She didn't say anything, but her warm palm slid up the inside of his arm, and her voice couldn't quite hide a pity mixed with shock. "But five years ago…"
"No one since you."
He felt something tapping at his heart, then, as if it were made of a tough porcelain that managed to hold despite chips and now cracks. He'd become a master at being stoic and shutting out the world, but he'd never in his life been able to shut out Penny, not even the memory of her. He hadn't even realized he'd been trying until he found his head turning and his eyes taking in the soft, pink flesh of her mouth, the way it curled around words and around sounds and expressions that weren't words but were still things he understood. She was still so kind and so strong, as she always had been, but a deep part of him hadn't quite forgotten that she could believe he would sit in a prison cell and forget she was out there, that he would even be capable of cutting off that flow of words between them, especially then. An even deeper part, though, knew that he'd already forgiven her, probably even before she was in his arms again, smelling so familiar and feeling absolutely real. Maybe it had been when her words found him, even as far away as the island, tucked into that Dickens novel.
He'd spent so many long months alone, and as much as he was grateful to that strange group of survivors for bringing his mind back to reality, he'd done his best not to physically engage with any of them in the few months he knew them. It seemed like a cruel proposition, to feel again, not just in his head where he could put up all the walls he needed but in his broken-down body. His body felt numb to him, but he knew it would be vulnerable to a sudden reversal, sliding into a pain deeper than bones. He remembered Sayid's hands on him when he finally came to from the hatch explosion, how the act of being bandaged was exhausting. When Penny came, he'd fallen into her arms, not knowing what it might do but finding no other alternative. It had made him feel like a human being again, but then, as soon as that human feeling had come, he worked hard to block it out again. It made him hurt so spectacularly that he wasn't prepared to face it.
Now he rolled over to face Penny; he really couldn't avoid it anymore. She turned too, and her hand lay over his heart now, rubbing small circles into the fabric of the t-shirt she'd brought him to wear.
With kind eyes, she said, "You don't have to worry. I didn't intend to seduce you tonight."
He found a smile threatening to steal over his face. He let it, even though it felt strange. "It's morning, almost. And I really thought you did."
"After everything… I wouldn't dream of it. Why would you think I would?"
"I don't know."
"It's not that I've stopped wanting you."
"You haven't seen me in years, Pen. You--"
"You know what I mean."
"Aye," he said with a sigh. "Well…I wouldn't be any good."
"Yes, you would."
"I can't even remember the last time I…" He broke off, impatient and irritated. He hadn't touched himself in weeks. Months. He didn't recall.
Penny tilted her head, smiling. "It's like riding a bicycle. A person never forgets."
She was both playful and sincere, and it made his chest contract with a bubble of mirth. "No, I don't know if it works that way." He paused, watching her eyes, and wondered if he could remember how to let these kinds of words roll off his tongue-light, buoyant, but heavy with promise. But at least the words were coming to him of their own accord now. He raised his eyebrows and added, "But true enough, you never had much in the way of brakes, did you?"
So suddenly it physically startled him, she laughed openly, clutching his bicep. "Not where you were concerned."
Here they were falling back into that smooth banter and innuendo they used to thrive on, especially in public; always promises of things to come. He didn’t think it should be that easy. They hadn't earned it. There was still too much distance of spirit. Or maybe it was just that it made him nervous. Things couldn't be as simple as that. He said: "I just don't think I can do it."
After a long pause, she said, "Des," and it made him hold his breath. This was where she would bring up Donald again, probably to tell him how it didn't mean anything that she had loved him or slept with him. That made his skin crawl, thinking of someone else's hands on her. He'd always hated that thought, even after all these years, but he especially hated it now, holding her again. Of course she would say he could do this. She had never forgotten what it felt like to wake up warm with someone in her arms or feel someone's hands skimming her skin: the curve of her collarbone, the inside of her thigh.
The thought of it bewildered him. He said, "Penny, I can't do this now." He rolled onto his back again.
"Okay," she said calmly, with only a trace of impatience in her voice.
"I'm serious. I know he's your husband-"
"Nearly my ex-husband."
"Whatever he is, I don't want to hear about him. And I told you it's not about him."
She took it in with only a small ripple of guilt. Then he watched something finally and irreversibly turn loose in her as her face became the one he'd seen many times before. It was the one she always had when he dreamed about her, those miserable nights in jail and days in the hatch. It was the one thing he'd never rounded over or exaggerated in his memory, or lost. This was the face of Penny determined.
Her hands, though, had no such insistence about them. He felt them drift up and settle into the hair at his temple while her thumb brushed his cheek. The touch was enough to make his eyes sting with tears, but he held them open and concentrated on the indomitable face peering into his. She said, "Why, Des? I accept that you can't, but you haven't really told me why."
"I don't know how to say things anymore."
"I'm not asking you to say anything. Or do anything for that matter."
"Pen, you bloody well just did, didn't you? And it's not that I don't want to. I do, I think."
"Desmond, you have to tell me what you want me to do. Should I go, or should I stay?"
"Stay."
"I don't know if I can just lie here and not touch you."
He closed his eyes and suddenly wondered why she hadn't just gone, just let him be. Anyone else would've given up by now. "You're touching me now."
She said, "Please, look at me." He opened his eyes slowly until they squinted against the plaintive look on her face, inches from his. She said, "I realize this is hard, and it's beyond strange. But I've finally got you here with me again, and I'm not going to let you…shut down. You can be angry or cold or…ask me a million questions I can't answer, but I won't watch you draw up inside yourself."
"Too late."
She broke at that. "No, it's not." She worked her face into the crook of his neck, into soft, sensitive flesh. "It's not. Tell me it's not, Des." It sent a shiver through him.
"It's not, Pen. It's…" He would fail, he knew, to keep the helplessness out of his voice: "It's just that you've never had cause to see me cry before." Not even the day he'd walked into the prison compound, unable to look back at her.
He felt her tears on his skin, hot and trickling down until they seeped into the pillow under their heads. In the space of a deep breath, he felt her change; it was in the grasp of her hands and the set of her jaw. Her voice might've shook a bit, but it was once again unmistakably that strong voice of the woman he'd fallen eternally in love with: "Well, almighty hell. Will it help if I'm crying my sodding eyes out too? Because I will if you don't fucking let me in."
He'd never had much luck saying no to that voice, and he didn't now. Before he realized what he was doing, or that it was a gesture that spoke well enough that it might have been words, he pulled her into his arms and it shattered him all over again, just like it had on the dock. This was perfect and it was killing him and it was all he could do, just feel her body fitting tight against his as she held onto him. Her long blonde hair had fallen over his face, and her fingernails made marks on his shoulders and neck, but he didn't care about that or that his arm under her was beginning to fall asleep. He just held her there and cried and listened to the sound of her sniffling in his ear. It hurt, but it wasn't as strange as he'd feared it would be.
After a long time, he felt her chuckling into his neck. "I think we've made everything soggy." She pulled herself away just enough to examine the pillow, still laughing to her herself. Her laugh was one of the first things he'd ever noticed about her, and it was the chief thing he'd never quite been able to picture or hear in his mind once he wasn't with her anymore. It was a musical laugh, but deep and throaty too, and it made her both classy and gorgeous yet utterly real, somehow at the same time.
She really came into focus for him then. Her hair was lighter than he remembered, but still long and thick, and he could smell shampoo in it, something faintly sweet, nothing that he remembered. She was wearing a dark green camisole, having thrown the sweater over the chair by the window, and that green brought out the range of her hazel eyes, as did the red lines in them and the glitter of tears.
He said, "God, you're so beautiful."
Predictably, she looked sheepish and shook her head, wiping her eyes, "I'm a blotchy mess."
"I don't care," he replied seriously. Then it took his breath away to see it cross her face: the need she'd been hiding since they finally got to be alone together. This was why he'd been guarding against her from the start, but although his knee-jerk fear seemed ridiculous to him now, he felt the words come out of him anyway: "I still don't think we should."
She raised her eyebrows. Clearly part of her still wanted to hold back, but the other part recognized that even if he was fragile, he was at least open now. She said, "So now it's a question of should, not can?"
His shoulds had always been a constant source of annoyance for this woman who lived by can. In the worst of times it had shot things through with too much fire, but it had more often made for the best sort of balance, where one tempered the other and they were both stronger. That they had stumbled upon it again made him smile, and he said, "No, it's a question of can in the worst possible fashion."
"Des, don't tell me you've forgotten about the first time we had sex…"
In response to his grimace, she laughed, and she turned over and fit herself back against his body. She probably didn't even recognize that she was doing what she'd always done early in the morning, to see if he was ready and willing, or if she could make him so. The curve of her shoulder and the feel of her back resting against his stomach and her thighs flush with his own made him wonder about the daylight lingering on the edges of the curtains. This was normal. This was okay. He was allowed to laugh. Really, their first time had been rather a lovely disaster, so much so that it had become their own personal myth.
As he let a finger trace a pattern up and down her arm, he summoned some counterfeit grouchiness and re-entered that old conversation. "It wasn't entirely my fault we never made it to the bed."
"Well, what you lacked in coordination, you always did make up for in…enthusiasm." He watched her face over her shoulder, how her jaw held in the smile even though her chest heaved with a little silent laughter.
More amused than anything, he said, "Do you really think making fun of me is the way to get into my pants, love?"
She rolled over to face him again, suddenly wide-eyed and serious. "No, no. God. I didn't mean-"
"It's okay, Pen," he said soothingly. "It would only wound me if I'd ever got any complaints."
"None." He felt her legs twining through his, but she didn't press as close as she could, just close enough that he would feel her there. "I meant what I said. I didn't bring you here to get you to make love to me. If you're not…" With a tilt of her head, a smile, and raised eyebrows, she said, "Well, it's probably healthy. And I'm too glad to have you back. I'm too…" She took a deep breath as tears welled up in her eyes again. "I'm still a little overwhelmed that you're really alive. And you don't hate me."
"I don't. And I'd say you have reason to be angry with me too, sailing off when I should have never let you go."
"God, Desmond. I didn't give you any reason to stay." She paused, letting her arm rest across his ribs, so that her fingertips could make tiny circles over his back. "I knew from the second you came off the boat that it was possible you'd want me again. I didn't know when I spoke to you on the phone, but I knew when I saw you. It scared the hell out of me."
"Me too." He didn't tell her all the reasons why-why he forgave, why he still loved, why it did indeed scare him a lot more than he'd thought possible. There was still the matter of who she was and who he was, and whether those people fit together, stripped of long-gone pasts and spackled over with separate lives, neither of which was anything less than messy.
With a pinched smile that battled her tears impressively, she let out a sigh and said, "So…right now, this morning, I want you in any capacity I can have you: clothed or unclothed, up to and including the quickest, messiest sex in the history of the world."
"We've already done that, haven't we, love?"
"We never did find your other sock," she said with a shake of her head. Then her eyes shifted again. She'd always been the temperamental sort, but it never ceased to amaze him how quickly her moods could turn on a dime, and how obviously it showed on her face. Running her hands over his beard, she said, "I know we can't pick up where we left off. I want you to know that. I get that. I don't understand what it means yet, whether this thing is even possible, but I'm not trying to just erase everything and go back to the beginning. There's no way to do that."
"I know. You're just trying to…"
"What?"
"I can't say what I mean. But I know what you're doing, and I understand."
"I thought we probably needed to just be together for a while. Alone and away from all the…insanity."
"So you really hadn't planned on seducing me?"
Shaking her head with a light swell of laughter, she replied, "No."
"Would you mind very much if I kissed you, then?"
Seriously, she said, "One question: am I allowed to try for more?"
It had taken him a lot of thought to decide he should kiss her; sex seemed like it might be too much--an attempt at a quick fix, one that could backfire spectacularly. But he knew there was no real way this could be any more complicated than it already was, and he realized he wanted this, now that he was here with her, so close to her. Maybe it seemed like such a foregone conclusion because it was obviously what they needed.
So he said with an even smile, "I would be quite disappointed if you didn't. But I make no promises about-"
Her lips crushed against his before he could finish, effectively knocking those worries-and all thoughts-from his dizzy brain. God, she tasted so good, like he remembered. Her mouth was hot and soft, and her wet lips pulled at his lightly at first, then harder, delving deeper. This was different; she kissed differently, and at first it was altogether too much sensation, especially as he was processing the memory and the reality together now. After a moment, though, he felt himself melting into her, like he always had. Lost to the world.
Then it took him by surprise: he felt himself trying to shut out all this feeling again, even after she'd managed to coax his stubborn soul open again. Forcing every muscle in his body and every tight fist in his heart to let go, he made his jaw relax, and she pressed herself even closer to him, fitting their bodies together until he found that his hands practically danced over her skin, too filled with possibility to know what to do first. He had barely figured out how to talk to her again. He had no idea how he might make love to her, but the possibility wasn't so scary anymore. He kissed her through tears, secure in knowing she was there to keep a strong hold on him, on them both, no matter what came next.