Fic for slybrunette's birthday: "Penitent," Des/Pen
Title: Penitent
Summary: Desmond and Penelope, just after rescue.
Rating: NC-17 Disclaimer: Lost is all ABC’s; no money/ownership here.
Author’s note: Dedicated to
slybrunette with best birthday wishes. Massive thanks as well to
cynthia_arrow for the inspiration and the encouragement.
Comments, feedback, and criticism are always welcome.
Meme: "2. Who tops? -- give me two characters and I'll tell you who will be "on top" during sex (we can interpret this top-bottom thing rather liberally?"
Reply: "[Des/Pen:] Desmond--because Penny wishes it so. :) Really, I bet he is rather fond of foreplay, so she gets exactly what she needs, but I bet when it comes to the deed itself, there's a lot of missionary going on." -
cynthia_arrow, here
Penelope waits in her hotel room while Desmond speaks with his brothers. Some people in her position, she supposes, would pass the time in tense idleness, pacing or rearranging things needlessly. She doesn’t lack that urge entirely, but she resists it. She spends the late morning and early afternoon making business calls and reviewing financial data. When the London markets close, she shifts her focus to the New York-based funds and properties, and when the day’s trading ends there as well, she pores over the new information, making notes for the days ahead. Whenever Desmond’s presence in her mind is so great as to preclude work, she does something useful. She spends twenty minutes at a time on callisthenics and aerobic exercises. She has a light lunch in the hotel’s restaurant and afterwards brushes her teeth thoroughly.
There’s a knock on her door just before six o’clock, and she feels compelled to look through the peephole and confirm her instinct before she lets Desmond in. They had their breathless, near-disbelieving embrace this morning, whispering all the things anyone might have expected. She steps back and allows the door to swing closed by itself, too loudly. Instead of staring as she’d like to, she squeezes his hand. “I haven’t seen you in five years, Desmond.” When he doesn’t give any sort of a reply, she asks, “What’s happened?”
“Too much.” He’s wearing a suit that looks cheap and freshly pressed; it hangs off him, and Penelope guesses he’s borrowed it from Iain. He looks pained, and Penelope receives the sudden impression that he’s struggling to communicate. “You don’t have to tell me everything,” she says.
“Not tonight.” There’s a hint of the old roguish mirth in his face. “What’s happened to you, Pen?”
“Somewhat less, I would wager.” She pours herself a glass of wine: Australian white, a bit dry for her preference. Desmond declines any. “I was married for a year. I made money.” She sets the wine down. “I looked for you.”
“You found me, Penny.”
“You were found, anyway.” She wants to go beyond that, but there’s no place to begin.
They migrate to the sofa, sometime, and ask each other questions about things they can’t change. Desmond is unconvinced that he isn’t still dreaming. Penelope gathers he’s witnessed, often enough that they seemed commonplace, things she either can’t fathom or would wish she couldn’t.
And she loves him. Every night for five years, she fell into bed hopeful and afraid, weaving strategies. Even now her hand rises to his cheek, automatically; it’s razor-burned, smooth when it was bearded this morning. “I’m glad you haven’t cut your hair,” she murmurs.
Desmond has been staring at her. “You’re beautiful, Penny.” He kisses her, and she leans low into the sofa, hoping he can intuit how much she’s missed him, because she’ll never be able to put it into words. She knows she’s greedy as she kisses him back, wanting everything he’s got to give her. “Desmond?”
“Mm?” He kisses her earlobe.
“I want you to promise me something.”
“Anything.”
There are a thousand things she wants to ask of him, all lost in kisses.
There will be things for them to discuss, later. He must know it. For now, all the answer she needs is for him to pull their bodies close together and stroke her hair, letting her hold him more tightly than must be comfortable for quite a few moments before she begins to kiss him again. His lips are sun-scorched; it feels as though his mouth should be dry, but it's not, and beneath the saltwater that somehow lingers on everything he smells and tastes like himself. Through his ill-fitting suit she can feel the sinew in his body, the deceptive strength in his lean frame. There’s a directed intensity, if not a method, in his kisses, and she’s sure he’s determined to lie here kissing her until everything else is gone from his mind.
He was always one for a good idea, if he’d let himself be.
She wants to feel every centimetre of his body, wants her lips and her fingers to reacquaint themselves with him, but there’s a desperation in his touch and his kiss, not allowing her the necessary freedom of movement. Desmond seems confident enough in the fact of his own existence, but his unwavering insistence on feeling her without distraction suggests that he’s less sure that she isn’t a dream. She’s still halfway frightened of the same thing, that she’ll awake for well past the thousandth time to find him vanished. On the whole, though, she thinks his grasp on the present reality is more tenuous than hers, and she’s disinclined to object to their proceeding Desmond’s way.
They lie on the sofa for what Penelope supposes must be a good while longer. She doesn’t want to breathe; it’s a distraction from the kissing, and for the first time in years, her body feels as if it’s properly afire, warm to a point that ought to be intolerable but is instead quite the opposite. Indiscriminately she runs her hands over Desmond, feeling soft hair and protruding shoulder-blades and a narrow frame pressed atop her, a sinewy body that she remembers being stronger and less lean than it is today. She’s aware of his dropping kisses down her neck and below her collar, caressing her hair and face and arms in turn and breathing in that strange way he always does when he’s aroused, as if he’s whispering to her. And then, she realizes, he is: “I think we might be more comfortable on the bed, Penny.”
“We might be.” She shifts in order to get up, and his thigh winds up pressed between her legs. She feels the once-familiar strength of the sensation of a wave pulsing through her, of needing to get closer and closer to Desmond and never letting him go. She fingers the lapels of his jacket. “You’re wearing too many clothes, though.”
Desmond returns her smile as they get up, looking down and blushing a bit the way he often does at these moments. His smile widens as he unbuttons his shirt, and by the time she’s got the bedsheets turned down, the ill-fitting suit is on the floor and Desmond is naked. That’s something he’s never been shy of; even now, with new scars on his body and the marks of punishing sun and some implacable weariness, he’s the same man she remembers. Everything is as familiar as if she’d seen it yesterday; sinewy, almost-smooth chest and limbs, beginning to glisten with sweat; erect penis becoming darker from the flow of blood; the mysterious set of freckles around one ankle. Before she can take in anything further, Desmond has walked over to her and begun unbuttoning her blouse, stroking every new bit of skin he exposes and sucking lightly at the area between her clavicles.
He unhooks her brassiere and loses no time in fondling her breasts, kissing them insatiably the way he’s always liked to do, letting one hand tease and pinch while the other strokes her hair. She wants, badly, to be doing the same to him… She’ll have her turn soon enough, perhaps even later tonight. The realization overwhelms her; she finds herself trembling with desire and something beyond it. Desmond presses a hand to her groin and goes down on one knee. Her trousers and underwear are around her ankles in a second, and Desmond rests his cheek against her pubic hair. She had forgotten that mannerism. She hopes he doesn’t notice the tear escaping her eye; he doesn’t seem to, busying himself with stroking her hips and flanks. He insinuates his fingers between her thighs, and her legs part of their own volition. The first touch of his tongue to her outer lips is enough to make her tumble back onto the bed, feet wide apart on the floor, and Desmond kneels lower and begins what seems like the leisurely process moving in on her clitoris. Once there, he brushes the tip of his tongue over it lightly several times, drawing little circles, before he begins the intermixed series of flicks of the tongue and little applications of suction that they both like so well. It’s always managed to seem new every time; Penelope has never been able to make sense of that, but invariably she enjoys it enough that Desmond has to hold her hips down simply to be able to get on with it. This time is no exception; they’re both enthusiastic enough that her skin will probably show a bruise in the morning, but she doesn’t care. He alternates at times, using his fingers to stimulate her while he penetrates her with his tongue, and something about the contrast is enough to bring her close to the edge, moaning and, she supposes, writhing a good deal more than is entirely conducive to her purpose.
Desmond stands up, wobbling slightly. “Should I get a condom, Penny?”
They’ve never used them; blood tests and the Pill have obviated the need, still do on her part. She swallows. “Only if you might - ”
“No.” Penny’s not twenty-eight anymore, her clock is ticking, she’s wanted to have Desmond’s child for so many years, now is no moment to discuss it, but she wants to, if she can only find a way to speak…
The thought is gone from her mind. Desmond is warm and solid and snug against her, kissing her hair and mouth. Their limbs tangle together, and then Desmond is on top of her.
There are no words. No one has made love to her like this in years. The world is nothing but Desmond’s eyes fluttering open and closed, his rough breathing, his back and his rump swaying under her hands. There’s the surge of feeling beyond what her mind can grasp, continuing for much too long and not nearly long enough and then she’s falling, falling, and her thoughts are unrecovered by the time Desmond tumbles after her. She registers only an inclination to protest when he withdraws from her, slowly, and rolls to the bed’s other side - cooling himself, she knows, he always feels too warm afterwards, and she has to content herself with no more than holding his hand for a few moments, wishing she could remember how to speak with him.
It’s Desmond who breaks the silence, still in his perennial whisper. “Penny - your father - ”
Before she can think better of it she gives him a light slap. “Never mention my father again, Desmond. Never speak to him.” She kisses the cheek she just slapped, repentant. “Promise me.”
He brushes her hand away and kisses her back. All is forgiven. “I love you, Penny.” He’s asleep before she can reply.
**Image credit: sylvia at lost-forum.