Olivia/Peter fanfic (post-Finale): In Reverse (XIX)

[elialys]

A/N: This is part XIX...all kind of bittersweet.

Previous parts: I. // II. // III. // IV. // V. // VI. // VII. // VIII. // IX. // X. // XI. // XII. // XIII. // XIV. // XV. // XVI. // XVII. // XVIII.



IN REVERSE

XIX.

Peter wakes up to the strangest smell of all…or at least to one he doesn't expect to smell at what he knows is a very late hour -or a very early one.

His eyes aren't even open yet, but he can also hear the noises, now, discreet but definitely there. It's the sound of drawers and cabinets opening and closing, of silverwares clinking against pots.

For a floating, confused moment, he is filled with puzzlement, overwhelmed by that strange feeling you sometimes get when you wake up, unsure of where you are. When he opens his eyes, he almost expects to be in his old room, the one he had when he shared a house with Walter, the old man obviously experimenting in the kitchen again.

But he instantly recognizes his and Olivia's bedroom, her side of the bed unmistakably empty, and the clock on the nightstand confirms that it is indeed way too late -or too early- for such smells and noises. It's 2:14am, and whatever Olivia has decided to bake at this ungodly hour, it involves melting chocolate.

He knows he could very well go back to sleep, having no doubt that she can keep on handling herself just fine, but he finds himself already craving for the sight of her, like he often does, especially after days like this one when they've barely seen each other. It had been a hot, incredibly humid and sticky day, like the rest of this endless month of July. For once, Olivia hadn't mind being stuck with paperwork, happy to stay in a building with air conditioning instead of being out on the field with him, in the heat -as if he would let her come anyway (or at least he likes to think he could influence her decision). Being the thoughtful boyfriend that he is, he had gone to the grocery store after work, because they needed to eat and were almost out of toilet paper. When he had come home around 9:30, Olivia had already been fast asleep, and he had quickly joined her after a cool, blissful shower.

Naturally, she is now up at two in the morning, baking.

Still a bit groggy with sleep, he makes his way to the kitchen, and her back is the first thing he sees as she's busying herself at the counter. Well, actually, her beautiful endless legs really are the first thing he sees, but to his defense, all she is wearing are panties and a stretchy shirt; he shamelessly stays back a little longer than necessary, happy to just look at her. He finds it funny -and fascinating- how from this angle, she doesn't look different at all. She's staying healthy, healthier than she's been in years according to her, and even keeps on working out, the easy-on-the-body kind of workout that is just good enough for someone like Olivia, who always has too much energy to burn. Her body is lean and nothing short of gorgeous if you asked him, disheveled hair flowing down her back.

And then she moves slightly to stir her melting chocolate, revealing part of her round stomach hiding under her shirt, and she looks even more gorgeous.

"You know, it's rude to stare," she says then without even turning her gaze to him, moving back to measuring ingredients, he guesses.

"So is baking at 2am when some people are trying to sleep," he answers lightly, walking to her at last and pinning himself against her back, one of his hands automatically coming to rest on her belly, and he buries his nose into her hair.

"I can't possibly have woken you up," she says without a single hint of guilt in her voice. "I made sure I wasn't too loud."

For a second, he almost tells her about how he initially thought it was Walter in the kitchen. He almost asks her if she remembers that time when they had awoken in the middle of the night to find him making pancakes, and how he had ended up falling asleep on his stool, face on the counter. He knows she remembers, just as he knows that she would gladly reminisce about Walter with him. But he stays quiet, because even after two years, it still hurts to think about him, to think about how he is locked up again.

He can't help but always remember his dad's terror that one time years ago, when he had thought he was going back to St. Claire's for good. How must he be feeling, now, being imprisoned for life? Being considered to be the evilest man in the Universe?

Instinctively, he buries himself a little more against Olivia, his body fitting hers perfectly, nose nuzzling her neck, and just then, the baby provides him with a very welcomed distraction as he feels her move somewhere deep beneath his hand. As always, she erases the pain of the past for a while, to engulf him in the wonders of what is to come.

"Did you feel that?" He asks quite dumbly with a stupid grin, raising his head to look at her profile, and she smirks, still focused on her task, letting out a chuckle that sounds like a snort.

"Yes, Peter, I felt that."

He doesn't apologize for his stupid question, because she knows it's genuine -and that it's 2am. He usually tries not to get overly cheesy when it comes to her current condition, but this is one of these times when he simply cannot fight it. And so he tenderly rubs her belly, hoping for more movement, bringing his smiling lips to her ear.

"I think she was saying 'Hi daddy!'" he whispers, and Olivia shakes her head against him, before breaking an egg in a bowl.

"Uh uh," she contradicts him, breaking another one. "She just wants me to eat more chocolate." And on those words, she drops the broken eggshells in the sink and brings a square of chocolate to her mouth.

He pulls away slightly again to look at her; she is still smirking a bit mockingly as she chews, adding a third egg and starting to whip them up enthusiastically with a fork. "Honey, you do know that it's not how the placenta works, right? She doesn't really taste what you're eating."

She stops her whipping movement to nudge him with her elbow, finally looking up at him to give him a look, lips pursed. "Thank you, mister Smartass, I know that. But I also know that she loves it when I eat chocolate, enough to make me crave for chocolate cake in the middle of the night. It's the endorphins. She feels it whenever I'm happy, remember?"

And she gives him another kind of look, then, raising her eyebrow, before pushing a piece of chocolate against his lips, which he instinctively opens to let her drop it in his mouth. As his thoughts immediately turn back to the conversation she's referring to, she turns back to her eggs.

She's talking about that one time he had asked her what he still believes were not unusual questions for a man to ask when it comes to sex and their pregnant girlfriend. He had been educated enough to know that the baby couldn't get physically hurt or anything, but he had felt a bit awkward thinking about what she might feel, and since Olivia obviously had empathic abilities when it came to their child, he had asked her. Which in turn had led her to look at him as if it was the most endearing thing she had ever heard.

"She doesn't know what's happening," she had reassured him with a bit of a tease in her voice. "She is literally in a bubble of amniotic fluid. All that she knows is that I suddenly get very happy and that I exceedingly think about you. Plus, I think she loves the rocking motion."

He had decided it was wiser to stop the conversation here.

Letting the chocolate melt against the inside of his cheek, he brings his face back down to the side of her neck, pressing a loud kiss there that causes her to wiggle in his arms, interrupting the whipping of the eggs again.

"Well, I still think she was just happy to have me join the baking party," he smiles against her skin. She smells almost as sweet as the chocolate tastes in his mouth. That's another aspect of her pregnancy he enjoys a lot; she's just sweeter.

Physically speaking, at least. Otherwise, she's just as ruthless with him as ever.

"Think whatever you want," she breathes out with a 'I know better' tone.

He raises his head again. "That's it. I don't think I should give you what I bought you earlier tonight if you're going to behave this way."

This makes her turn more fully in his arms, still smirking. "Nice. Now you're trying to bribe me. I can tell you're going to be great at parenting." He just blinks at her, and she narrows her eyes. He knows she's too curious to win that game. "Fine," she sighs. "What did you buy me?"

It's his turn to smirk, as he lets her go to go grab the plastic bag he had left near the door. He takes out what was inside, before going back to the kitchen area. He holds it out to her, and she takes it, eyes still narrowed and lips pursed. She looks at it for a few seconds, before glancing up at him.

"A picture frame?"

He shrugs as if it wasn't that important, but he knows how much it is to him, and he suddenly wishes he had more than boxers on so he could put his hands in his pockets.

"A cheap picture frame," he notes, trying to keep the conversation light. "I thought we could put a picture of her in it once she's born, you know, one of those corny shots people do of their naked baby in a cup or something." But she's looking graver already, though he doesn't understand why. He loses his smile then, resting his palm on the fridge's door since he doesn't have any pocket to hide it in. "It was on one of these display shelves they've got in the store. It's just…I looked at the frames and realized that we've been together for three and half years, sharing this place for over two years, and we don't have a single picture around."

She's definitely tensed now, avoiding his eyes as she hands the frame back to him. "Well, we haven't exactly had a lot of free time to joke around and take pictures," she says quite tersely, before turning back to her bowl of eggs.

"Everyone has busy lives," he counters softly. "People make time."

She doesn't look at him, and simply pours the eggs in with her flour and sugar, beating that up with even more energy, her cheeks slightly flushed.

"Olivia?" He tries to get her to focus back on him, but she's stubbornly ignoring him. "Why is this upsetting you?"

"It's not upsetting me," she says, but she's beating her batter with so much force that he can hardly hear her answer over the sound of it.

"You're obviously not okay with it," he insists, and she stops abruptly, giving him a dark look.

"Just drop it, Peter." She says harshly, her blush a darker shade of pink now. She quickly turns back to the counter, turning the fire off under the melted chocolate.

Maybe he should drop it, let it go, and go back to bed. He knows that her extreme reaction might be simply due to her hormones, but this has to be a sensitive subject in the first place to upset her that way. He knows she didn't have any picture frames either in her previous apartment, though she does have a photo album, mostly filled with pictures of Rachel and Ella. He had always thought that she had simply never taken the time to do something as trivial as putting pictures in frames and hanging them on her walls. It is also true that she didn't have that many reasons to do it before.

He had thought having a baby together was a good reason for them to start. But it's obvious that he's not the only one having issues in this area.

And so he decides not to drop it. The only thing he drops is the frame, putting it down against the fridge, before going back to stand behind her, gently placing his hands on her hips, resting his cheek against the side of her head.

"You know, I've never been that fond of picture frames myself," he tells her softly.

She doesn't deny it this time. She just keeps on doing what she's been doing, though the batter is pretty smooth by now. But she does speak, eventually.

"I remember you had one of you as a kid in your room, when you shared the house with Walter."

It usually stings more when they mention his name, or the brief time when the three of them practically lived together. But Walter has pretty much been on his mind ever since he has woken up, and knowing where this conversation is about to go, it's actually appropriate for her to say his name.

He can't help but smile a little, though, bringing his lips closer to her ear. "Really? You honestly see me as the kind of guy who loves to keep pictures of himself as a little boy in his bedroom?"

She lets go of her whip then, finally looking back up at him, and she feels more relaxed already. "Walter put it in there." It's not a question, but an observation, as if she's just realized how obvious that was. Her eyes are softer, too, because she knows how much it costs him to talk about this.

Peter nods slightly. "He put it in there shortly after we moved in. I thought about just hiding it in a drawer, but he was so ridiculously happy to ramble about it whenever he would come and wake me up in the middle of the night for whatever reason. So I just left it there."

Almost unconsciously, she has turned in his arms again, her hands resting on his sides now as he wraps his arms loosely behind her; he loves the soft pressure of her stomach against him. She's simply looking up at him, waiting patiently for him to continue.

He sighs softly, before admitting: "Ever since I was a kid, I've had a tendency to associate those kind of pictures with hypocrisy and lies, like…they were all like those fake family portraits they put in it for display. We were only pretending our family was happier than it really was." He doesn't miss the understanding in her eyes, and he knows he has struck a nerve. He just keeps on going. "I guess it doesn't help either when you know it's not really you on most pictures, all around your house."

Her touch on his sides is already firmer, and she's now displaying what he mentally refers to as her 'empathic face'. She seems more upset by this than he expected her to be, but after all, her hormones do make her a bit more emotional on occasions.

"Did you know?" She asks then almost in a whisper. "I mean, I know you don't remember much from your childhood, but…Did you know it wasn't your world?"

He shrugs slightly. "I think I did. Obviously, they did a good job at making me believe that this was my world, and I guess that's why I repressed so many memories, but ever since I've learned the truth, I've thought about it a lot." Excessively, he almost says, but he knows he doesn't need to say it out loud, not to her. "Things I thought were just my mind messing up with me, like details on toys or team names, I realized they were true and…yeah. I knew."

Both her hands are on his bare chest, now, one of them resting upon his heart, an instinctive gesture of comfort, and so he keeps on talking, because as always, it actually almost feels good to share this with her, to know she cares.

"I remember my mom finding me staring at the wall of pictures she had in the house, once, and of course, she started pointing at them saying 'Remember this…' and 'Remember that one time…'. When I calmly told her I didn't remember any of these, but that it made sense since it wasn't me on those pictures, she quietly freaked out. She tried to convince me otherwise, and I guess I eventually let it go. But the next day, all the pictures were gone. All the pictures of…him. She said we simply needed 'newer' ones, and that the next weekend, we would get Walter to take some with us. But Walter already wasn't really around anymore, so she ended up taking dozens of pictures of just me, like the one you saw in my room. I came to pretty much hate her camera, and everything she framed."

He knows he is just grazing the surface of what he used to feel when he was a kid. Even when he had pretty much run away from home when he was old enough to do so, he hadn't brought a single picture of his mother with him, and hadn't had any reason himself to keep photographs of all the people he met around the world.

Because it had been all lies, first his parents', then his own, as he conned everybody around him, and he did it so expertly.

He suddenly finds himself thinking about another period of time he usually tries to completely forget, that time when he had been the one being conned. It just comes to him, the memory of the day when the Other Olivia had dragged him into a photo booth, and she had been so happy; she had been laughing when he had mostly felt uncomfortable. At the time, he had thought it was simply because of his old dislike for pictures, but he knows now.

He had felt her lies, felt that this joyful woman who had been grinning at the camera couldn't possibly be the woman he had fallen in love with.

He brushes the memory away, though, along with the guilt that always came with it, focusing back on the Olivia who had gotten upset a few minutes ago when he had offered her a picture frame.

He moves his hands, then, slightly pulling away from her to tenderly put them down on her round stomach, offering her a small smile. "I just thought…we should have pictures of her. Of her with us. Because it doesn't always have to be about lies and hypocrisy. It can just be about…us."

She remains quiet, though her cheeks are a bit pink again, and her eyes shine a little too brightly. She looks away then, and turns once more to face the counter, before briefly bringing a hand to her face, wiping her nose in a way that is telling. And he knows that she's bracing herself for what she's about to say. Just as quietly, he wraps her in his arms again, cheek against cheek. She grabs the pot of melted chocolate and start adding it to the rest of the batter.

"We actually had one of those family portraits in our house when I was little," she says then, her voice remarkably steady and composed, both their gazes fixed on the bowl as dark brown meets beige, creating mesmerizing ripples of colors. "It was on the wall, right next to the entrance door. At first, it was one of us with our mom and our dad. But when he died and our step-father moved in, he asked mom to take it down. And it wasn't even that bad at the time, you know. He didn't drink that much yet, and mom wasn't too sick. But I hated him from day one, just because…" She stops, busying herself with getting all the chocolate off from the inside of the pot.

"Because he wasn't your dad," he finishes for her softly as she puts the pot in the sink, now grabbing a wooden spoon.

"Yeah…" she says in a tensed voice, starting to stir the mix, slowly. "Anyway, it got worse when I practically begged my mom not to take the picture down. I was young, no more than seven I think. And so he decided that instead of having her take it down, we should take a new picture, with him on it." He manages to snuggle a little closer to her, nuzzling his nose on her cheek, knowing how hard it is for her to be admitting this, but also knowing that it will be as liberating for her as it had been for him. "So our mom dragged us to a professional photographer, all dressed up and everything."

He can only imagine the face she had been making on that picture. And as if she had just read his mind, she adds: "I didn't want to smile, and yet, I had this huge, fake grin on the final shot. And I can still feel his hand on my shoulder; he dug his fingers in there so hard, I remember having marks on my skin for a few days after that. And I can still hear him whispering: "Smile, Olive...', and it sounded more like a threat than an encouragement. So I smiled."

She's still stirring slowly, even though there is nothing left to be mixed at that point, except that she needs the movement to keep on going; his heart is beating painfully loudly under his ribs, and he's sure she can feel it against her back. He only tightens his hold around her.

"Two years later, I shot him. I shot him just when he entered the house and…I shot him twice, so there was a lot of blood. And I remember just sitting there on the floor afterwards, not staring at him, but staring up at that picture on the wall, because it was splattered with blood, too. And I remember thinking: 'Good. Now it looks accurate.'"

Peter has closed his eyes and dropped his head, pressing his lips to her neck again, wanting nothing more than to absorb all the hurt of what she's been through. She has raised a hand, burying her fingers in his hair as if to bring him even closer to her.

"I'm sorry…" he whispers against her skin. "I shouldn't have bought that frame."

But he feels her shaking her head, and her hand leaves his hair as she moves, turning around in his embrace, and he opens his eyes. Hers are bright, and their rims are slightly red, but she doesn't cry. She brings both her hands up, then, cupping his jaw and offering him a sad smile, shaking her head a little.

"No, you're right." She says softly. "This shouldn't be about how our families messed us up. This needs to be about how we'll make sure we won't mess her up."

He can't help but let out a small chuckle then, not because he's amused, but because he loves her too much. "Spoken like the true optimistic I know you are," he says just as quietly.

She cocks her head to the side then, pursing her lips a little. She stares at him for a few seconds, almost as if studying him, before finally saying with that same soft voice: "You know, just because I don't get overly emotional about everything happening to us right now doesn't mean that I don't have hopes and dreams for her. For us. For…our family. Because I do." And he just loves how slightly embarrassed she looks when she lets herself admit how deeply she cares.

His hands have found their way back to her stomach, and he offers her the sweetest smile. "I know you do."

She lets go of his face and bends down to grab the frame still on the floor, then, straightening up with a small huff. She looks at it for a moment, now studying the fake family portrait in it, and part of him still feels like putting it in the trash.

But when she raises her head again, she's smiling softly, and the urge vanishes.

"Go put it in her room," she eventually says, nodding shortly, as if to herself, offering the frame back to him. "Hang it on the wall. We'll put a picture of her naked in a cup. Or something."

But he chooses to ignore the frame for the time being, leaning in instead, and one of his hands leaves the firm and comforting curve of her stomach to cup her cheek as he kisses her softly, tenderly, lovingly.

And her hopes and dreams taste sweet.

(July 2014)

TO PART XX

A/N: In the Yellow!Universe, nothing bad ever happened after this.