8) Who likes to wear the others sweatshirts?
Penelope has a $2800 sweater which has been stretched into unwearability by Gordon’s Olympic Gold Medalist shoulders, because it’s cold in that drafty old manor and he just grabbed the first thing he could find that was soft and warm, with very little regard to the fact that it was also a very petite lady’s favourite pink cashmere v-neck sweater. He gave her a replacement in the form of his favourite sweater, but this is a Cal-tech hoodie from his alma mater, and ranks rather lower as far as pure fashion is considered, and is only worth about a tenth of the price. She still secretly sort of likes it, though.
I have actually written both sides of this particular scene, in two very different scenarios, and because I am shameless I will just copy both here:
Her silence stretches the moments between them, so it seems like longer than it really is before he clears his throat and says, softly, “Hey. Penny?”
She realizes just a fraction of an instant too late why he wants her to look up again, because they’ve been here before. She’s been at the edge of an abyss, at the end of the line, and helpless and hopeless and with no one else to turn to but him. Both times this has happened before, it’s been because she’s put him in danger, dragged him along behind her and into trouble. There’s a pattern here, and this is predictable.
So it’s not a surprise when he kisses her.
Part of her expects it; knows that he’s just picking up the latter half of something abbreviated, a long ago moment between them. Months and months back, and she still remembers the way he’d taken her hand when she’d turned towards him, and the words now or never. Only it hadn’t been then, and it certainly hasn’t been never, because she’s kissed him twice now, and the second time not even twenty-four hours ago. He’s only evening the score.
And it’s awful how badly she just wants to give in. To let the tension fall away, the rigidity of her shoulders, her spine—to turn inward and allow herself just to be held, because she knows more than anything else that he’d hold her, that he wants to. He never seems to have the slightest difficulty sorting out what he wants to do from what he should do. He’s done this because he loves her, is in love with her, and he kisses her like that’s just the only thing he wants in the entire world; just to be in love with her. His hand has come to rest against the curve of her neck, she can feel his thumb brush the point of her pulse, and she wonders if he’s cheating, gauging her heart rate to measure her response. It’s what she’d do.
If ever in future anyone were to ask Penelope about the moment she’d fallen in love with him, it wouldn’t be this moment that she pointed to. Her answer will have the benefit of hindsight, and she’ll point to an array of moments that could’ve fallen anywhere along the continuum of their long acquaintance. Moments when she’d fallen in love with the touch of his hands or the light in his eyes; the way he smiles and the way he makes a hobby of being kind to her. With each and every one of those hundreds of tiny changes; the work of moments that she’s watched happen slowly, over the course of time. This isn’t the moment she falls in love with him.
But this is the moment when she realizes just how long he’s been in love with her.
It’s a strange thing to know, especially as wholly and completely as she suddenly seems to know it. Sitting beside him beneath a staircase, after a day like today, a day so different from the days they usually spend together—realizing that it’s not the silly, childish crush she’s always assumed it was. And it seems like such an enormous, obvious truth, yet it’s hard to know how to react. Penelope doesn’t feel frozen exactly, so much as she feels some essential part of her has stilled, and grown suddenly calm and tranquil, in the presence of something very important.
He’ll remember what she does next for the rest of his life, and so it’s very important that she does it slowly and carefully, with absolutely no ambiguity about her intent. Gordon’s hands are still anxiously occupied by the champagne bottle he’s been toying with, and Penelope reaches over to take it from him, sets it gently on the floor between their feet. One of her knees presses against his as she shifts to sit closer, takes his hand in hers, and threads her fingers between the spaces between his.
And, well. She’s probably had just enough champagne for this to be a viable course of action.
She finds she quite likes the way that, even sitting, she needs to turn her face upwards to press her lips against his jaw.