Keep You at Your Best

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

Lucy was an individual built with a natural comfort for words. Moments without a word to offer were rare, but voicing as such was even more rare. Had she been in the company of anyone else, she wouldn't have expressed it at all. Then again, she doubted she'd be at a loss if she were with anyone else.

Somehow, admitting the fault of silence was easy when Penny was the individual catching the notion.

Because those reassuring words were perfect in their own way. It didn't matter that the ink manipulator couldn't look any further than she had, or that the things already offered were too overwhelming in the greatest way for her to attempt any further progression. Pressure to her lips kept her quiet enough, actively allowing her to ignore the feeling in the back of her head. Anything to slowly quell the nature of such an inability.

"I don't want to get too far ahead," Lucy offered, though the encouragement allowed her to lower herself back down again. To breach the distance she'd been holding herself up to create for the necessity of the conversation. Though the bare break, Lucy kissed her again. Lightly despite the lack of subtlety to her intention, "I can't miss anything with you."

[Penelope Serrano-Blaise]

Really, Penny should have expected Lucy to speak again. It was so unlike her to keep quiet, in every sense of the word. And when she did, it dragged an unconscious smile out of the Brit as she raised her eyebrows. Because it wasn't surprising to hear that Lucy didn't want to get too far ahead, the fact alone that she was thinking of any point in the future was something of a rarity.

But a kiss kept Penny silent. As light as it physically was, the weighted intention behind it was like a solar flare, burning up the oxygen from her lungs. It was hardly enough, and Penny couldn't help but to shift forward in an attempt to catch her lips again - and she managed, but just barely a brush of her lips as Lucy spoke.

"You make me want to focus on the now." Penny admitted, "It's strange to think how little I did before. I was always planning." And she still was, but that was hardly the point. "You make me feel like I'm actually living."

[Lucy Serrano-Blaise]

The minimal brush of Penny's lips against her own nearly caused Lucy to lose her train of thought entirely. It would have been so easy to give up on the intention behind the conversation in order to give into intention of a different kind. But the latter offer she had to give was important; she wasn't nervous to look ahead because it wasn't like her to do so. She had a point to prove.

Flashing forward too far wasn't worth it. Not when the alternative was every day in between.

Hearing that Penny was intently focused on the same thing was enthralling within itself. After all, she was forced to spend so much time in the past. She likely gave into that fact for the years she had to. And now, there was this. She felt like she was living, and the words were enough to rip the air from the ink manipulator's lungs in a heavy, happy exhale.

"You're living." Lucy repeated, breaching the distance to kiss her with every ounce of intention she'd been trying to hold onto.

[Penelope Serrano-Blaise]

A weighted statement within itself, Penny felt the lift of it as it left her lips. How necessary it was to express just what it meant. Her lips parted again in order to offer more; Penny rarely rambled, but this was different. Stuck in the past, she had so often counterbalanced it in the most detrimental way. To look ahead. Both denied the Brit the chance to live in the now. To actually live. And she changed that.

But repetition silenced Penny in the best of ways. Two simple words, and every urge to try and explain dropped from her tongue. If one were to understand the fact, it well and truly would be Lucy Serrano.

So she caught Lucy's lips with ease, unable to deny the intention that lined them, or how it ripped any remaining amount of air from her lungs with another jump of her pulse. Adding pressure to bring Lucy closer - if that were even possible - Penny pressed herself against the Australian's form.

Living. On a day that wasn't meant to be celebrated, with the person she enjoyed spending every day with. Who made looking back less painful, looking forward more exciting, and living now completely worth it.