Hurricane Heartbeats // (Day 4)

( P E N E L O P E C A L Y P S O L I B E R T I N E )

Shake down, you make me break, for goodness sake
I think I’m on the edge of something new with you
Shout out, don’t drown the sound, I’ll drown you out
You’ll never scream so loud
As I want to scream with you

Holding my palm out in front of Fitz's mouth, I attempt to measure his breaths — —



So. I wrote a whole bunch of this post earlier, then proceeded to do a really stupid thing and lost it. FML FML FML FML FML FML FML. So I'm being incredibly lame and putting up a filler post so I can write this when I'm back from Vermont on Tuesday. I figured Windy might need to know what happens in this post though, so here we go:

In this post Pen is kind of a creeper and is watching Fitz sleep, amazed by his breathing and how it's warm kinda like when you hold your hands out to a fire which in Pen's case means burning yourself until your skin blisters FUN TIMES, only... you know... more pleasant and less self-destructive. Nice. PFTLOL.

So this is gonna turn into a Fitz/Noah compare/contrast type deal, about how she always overlooked Fitz in favor of Noah's in-your-face sunchild spitfire personality, not realizing that Fitz is this totally lovely and understated human being. The kind of person that no one ever regrets loving because they make you better by association. Pen feels like a idiot for not appreciating him like he deserves, even now. Because like every girl who has ever loved a bad boy (and overlooked all the decent, nice guys along the way), she knows she's been making the wrong choices from the start, only she wouldn't take anything back, because none of it ever really felt like a choice to begin with. But, there is a piece of her that wishes she loved Fitz like she thinks she might love his brother, although in truth, her love for Fitz is far deeper than her attraction to Noah, because brother/son/friend feels > teenage hormones.

YEAH. I'M GOING THERE WITH THIS NOISE.

So anyway. Back to the spoilers. All this nonsense winds us up at story time, wherein Pen tells Fitz about how she used to pretend the Ripley boys were proposing to her every time they brought in one of their grave robbing prizes ~MYSTERIOUS~ wedding rings to pawn at her family's shop. Noah/Fitz/Jude/Nino would hold the ring out for her to take and only in Pen's head, they would be proposing to her. Her sweet sixteen-year-old soul, as full of fancy as it was ocean water, would smile and extend her hand and say "YES"... as if she were accepting something truly meant from her, instead of holding her hand out for something that wasn't supposed to belong either of them to begin with. A thief in more than one way, this girl.

And so this story ends up with a side note or two about how Nino Ripley was her first kiss, even though Noah was the one she'd always daydreamed about, but hey. What can you do. Such is life and woe are the problems of a middle class anyone-type girl from District Four. Whatever. In any case, this brings us to Pen deciding to give Fitz a goodnight kiss, only —

OKAY WINDY. DON'T READ THIS IF YOU LIKE SURPRISES BECAUSE URGH. THIS TOTALLY RUINS IT. I DIDN'T WANT TO WIP THIS AT ALL, BUT I'M SO FRUSTRATED WITH MYSELF FOR LOSING THIS POST AND NOT BEING ABOUT TO REWRITE IT THAT I HAVE TO AT LEAST WRITE THE GIST OF IT ALL DOWN SO I DON'T FORGET THAT. BUT I WOULD RATHER YOU NOT READ THE END OF THIS SUMMARY, EVEN THOUGH IT'S A LITTLE BIT INTEGRAL TO YOU KNOWING HOW FITZ WILL RESPOND, BUT I STILL FTTTTTTTTTTTTTT. I DO NOT APPROVE OF THIS WIP. IT'S A FLUFF BUZZKILL. RUINING ALL MY FUN. D:<

So okay, Fitz is sleeping with his head in Pen's lap. I think I neglected to mention that earlier. Also the part where Pen gets all touchy feely and brushes her fingertip across the tips of his eyelashes and daydreamy girl stuff like that, mkay? Mkay. Just, idk, face!feels, that happened and I tried to write it in a way that wasn't totally creeper-weird, but I feel like everything I write is inherently creeper-weird, so eh. Maybe it's weird, maybe it's not, but I'M SIDETRACKED AGAIN. Back to this kiss!fluff fantasticness:

Pen leans down to give him a goodnight kiss on his forehead or something almost painfully innocent like that, stopping with her lips like... an inch from face, then veers off-course to kiss him fo' realz because she's Penelope Libertine and he's Fitz Ripley and so he proposed to her a billion times over the years (doesn't matter that he didn't know that's what was happening up in her frivolous little mind) and she said yes a billion times (doesn't matter that her yeses to Noah where a little more sincere, that doesn't make her yeses to Fitz anything less) AND SO: WHAM BAM THANK YOU MA'AM. She kisses him. No, like, she really kisses him. And she doesn't see it coming, because even when she was making her move she was still pretty sure this was just gonna be a peck, but YEAH OKAY WHATEVER THEY ARE DESTINED TO DIE. So maybe this is Fitz's first kiss, she doesn't even know, but what she does freaking know or think she knows, because girl is gonna get a REAL surprise if Fitz ends up kissing random Tribute!boys, lollllll is that this is Fitz's last kiss... and hers too. So she's not gonna kiss him like she kissed Nino, a silly playground first kiss followed by a shout about cooties. No. She's gonna kiss him like the reason she's short of breath is because her lungs have been punctured by a harpoon. Like the reason her heart is palpitating is because she's bleeding out and the foolish organ in her chest doesn't know when to give up. Like the reason she's kissing him hard instead of soft is because this is her grand dying moment and she doesn't have the strength to hold herself up so she's just gonna fall and let him catch her like always.

And maybe there's still a voice in her head whispering that it wishes she were kissing Noah Ripley like this instead... but there's an even louder voice yelling at that one to SHUT THE EFF UP.

Yeah okay, now let's just remember that this is not a love profession. Pen still can't help the part where she's in love with his brother and FITZ IS GAY and I dun care how flufftastic this nonsense is, it's still PLATONIC. Even though it doesn't sound like it. And even though it's a little bit not-platonic, let's be honest. It's endgame platonic and that's what's important. Wake up the next morning and go on with life platonic. I used to make out with your brother Nino behind the pawnshop platonic. Coming out of the closet platonic. Whatever. I DO WHAT I WANT.

Uhhhh... this post when I rewrite it into an actual post again is prolly going to turn at least one person into a diehard Pen/Fitz shipper. Oops. XD

P.S. — THIS IS A WIP. LOL.

Standing there with your smile blinding your eyes
From seeing my face as I’m dying to figure out a girl
But she drifts so far away
I’m on her coast
I should stay and map around your world

So don’t say
"These currents are still killing me"
And you can’t explain
How the wind went and pulled me
Into the hurricane

Stand up, don’t make a sound, your ears might bleed
Their sweet fluorescent enemies that live inside of me
The world moves faster than I knew
Not fast enough to not creep up on you
And the space we put between

So pull me under
Your weather patterns
Your cold fronts
And the rain don’t matter
Because a sun burn's what I needed

You don’t do it on purpose, but you make me shake
Now I count the hours until you wake
With your baby's breath
Breathe symphonies
Come on, sweet catastrophe

OH YEAH. ALSO:

[Penelope uses First Aid because I forgot to do that earlier]

Maybe this time I can follow through
I can feel complete and stop paying dues
Stop the rain from falling
Keep my ocean calm
This time I know nothing's wrong