Fic: Flickers in Time (Peter/Olivia) Chp. 6 - Ask
Title: Flickers in Time
Summary: "She is damaged and broken, as is he, but she remains. Brave, strong, beautiful. And they must fight for each other." A collection of oneshots, centered around Peter and Olivia.
Rating: PG
Pairing: Peter/Olivia
Spoilers: General
Disclaimer: I do not own Fringe or its characters, storylines, etc. But if I had a swimming pool filled with money, I would totally buy it, make my own tv network, and give Fringe all the seasons ever.
Author's Note: Hi there. Remember me? Long time no see.
I suggest reading this to Son Lux's "Flickers". The song has a really strange, awesome vibe to it that goes with this.
Unbeta'd. All mistakes are mine.
Chapter 6 - Ask (Season 3, Post 3x08)
She wishes things could just effortlessly go back to the way they were. Before Peter left, before she was taken. Before she was replaced and no one seemed to notice. (Although, she's sure they noticed. She's sure they did. They may not have acted on anything, or confronted the other her. But they did notice. She's sure they noticed.)
They don't.
Broyles tells her to take time off of work, saying that she should rest and recover before returning to duty. She went through an ordeal, and she needs to take it easy for a little while. Everyone else seems to emphatically agree with him. And, look, she gets that she's been through a lot recently. She recognizes that they took over her mind and pumped her full of drugs and tried to kill her. But she's okay now. She feels fine. And she knows who she is.
Really, the only thing she feels like doing is trying to catch the bastards that did all of that shit to her. And she can do that better from her office than from her living room. At her office, there's always the background hum of people working in the lab, a sharp mind to bounce ideas off, and extra set of eyes to read the files and try to pick up on things she might've missed. And someone to bring her coffee and a sandwich at lunch when she forgets to eat.
At home, it's just her at the coffee table, her glasses on her nose and five or six file folders spread out in front of her. A bowl of dry corn flakes and a nearly-empty glass of whiskey sit on the floor by her feet. She can only read the files a handful of times before the words start to blur together, and it's so damn quiet that her mind starts to wander. She just isn't used to working in silence anymore, and noise doesn't distract her now. It helps her focus. Without it, her thoughts begin to drift. And then she starts to dwell on things that she shouldn't be thinking about, turning them over in her mind, like the fact that someone has been living in her apartment for the past few months and all the food in the refrigerator was bought by her and the glass she's drinking out of was washed by her and I wonder if she sat on the couch reading case files like this or if she went to the lab. I wonder who she liked to use as a sounding board and I wonder if they brought her black coffee with one sugar and turkey on wheat with lettuce, tomato, and mustard. I wonder if she pretended to drink my whiskey and that's why no one said anything and I wonder if she washed these sweatpants or if I did and I wonder, I wonder, I wonder.
(And she misses her office at the lab. And the people that work there. A lot. She wants to go back there and re-stake her claim on the place and its citizens, proving that they were never hers. It was her desk, they were her friends, and damn it, they noticed, alright?)
She wishes people were like rubber bands, that no matter how oddly they were stretched and contorted by some outside force, they snapped back completely, without hesitation, without complication.
They aren't.
Everyone treats her like she's some precious china doll, like she came back with the word 'fragile' stamped across her forehead in bold, red, capital letters. She's not different. She's Special Agent Olivia Dunham, Fringe Division, and she's strong, brave, and ready to go. So everyone can stop walking on eggshells around her, and thinking that if they so much as blink too hard in her direction she'll shatter into a billion pieces.
And Peter…
Well, she wishes Peter would just ask her out, for God's sake.
She crossed to another universe to save his life, bared her heart and soul to him to convince him to come back. Then she lost him for such a long time, but still, she clung to him. She thought about him over and over again so she wouldn't forget, so that he wouldn't be taken over by someone else's memories. Now, she's home. And she really wouldn't mind getting dinner sometime, you know?
She thought he wanted her. When he put his hand on her cheek after Jacksonville, it had felt like he wanted her. When they kissed over there, it had felt like he wanted her. When he tangled his fingers in her hair and parted his lips against her own, it had felt like he wanted her. When he agreed to come back for her, it had felt like he wanted her.
He held her hand in the hospital and kissed her forehead. Doesn't that mean something? Doesn't that mean he missed her too?
Then why won't he just ask?
He just calls mostly every evening and the conversation is:
"Hi."
"Hey."
"How are you?"
"Fine. How about you?"
"I'm alright. You're sure you're feeling okay?"
"Yeah. I feel fine."
"You're sure? Because Broyles said - "
"Don't worry about what Broyles said. I'm fine, I promise."
"Okay. You need anything?"
"No, I think I'm good."
"Okay. If you do, just call. At any time. You know it doesn't bother me."
"I know. Thanks, Peter."
"Don't worry about it."
"How's Walter?"
"He's as Walter as ever. He's in the kitchen baking something now. It smells…interesting."
"Hmmm. Well, I can't wait to hear how delicious it tasted."
"Of course."
…
"Well, I better go. I think Walter may be in the process of burning the house down. I'll call you tomorrow?"
"Yeah, that'd be great."
"Okay. Bye, Olivia."
"Bye."
Or some variation. And every time her phone rings and he is on the other end, she thinks that this is the conversation when he's finally going to ask.
And he never does.
Hell, she'll take drinks, if not dinner. Or an invitation to the nightly Bishop Bakery. Or he can just invite himself over. He used to invite himself over all the time. She couldn't count the number of times she found him on her doorstep - sometimes with a phone call, but many times without - holding a bag of Thai food and a DVD.
"I come bearing gifts. I've got delicious food in one hand and quality entertainment in the other. I trust that you have the alcohol."
"I think that I may have something to drink laying around this place somewhere. Good thing too, because if that movie you're holding is as good as the last one you brought, we're going to need it to make it to the end."
"That's half the fun, isn't it?"
And they would sit on the couch and watch anything ranging from cheap horror movies to The Universe to old black and white films starring people like Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. There would be two finished beverages on the table, empty food containers in the trash can in the kitchen. They would laugh at inappropriate times and he would try and impress her by rattling off random bits of movie trivia he knew.
And sometimes, halfway through the movie, their hands would touch where they rested together on the middle cushion of the couch. Neither of them would adjust their positions. Neither of them would pull away.
Every once in a while, he would call her sweetheart. And she didn't stop him.
(He hasn't called her that since she returned. She knows she's only been back for a week and a half, and it was really only every once in a while, but she wants to hear it all the same.)
On those nights, it had felt like he wanted her.
Had she read too much into it? She didn't think so. It was him, after all, who had tried to kiss her first. It was always him who called, him who came over, him who seemed to give, give, give while she chose what to receive.
She hadn't. It was impossible. He kissed her back. He came home.
So why wouldn't he just ask her?
She'd pushed him away for so long. She'd ignored the way he would brush up against her too many times for it to be accidental. She'd turned away when she felt his stare linger on her too long to be friendly, because this wasn't supposed to happen again, not after John.
Then he glimmered and left and it had hurt so much.
She realized that she had tried so hard to resist him. But somehow, Peter Bishop patiently toiled and chipped away at the barriers she put up. He wormed his way under her skin and into her heart and no matter how much she attempted to avoid it, Peter Bishop had won.
And she stopped fighting it, stopped being afraid. She breathed it in, drowned in it, and when she saw him again, she didn't hold anything back. It was her turn to give. And he received.
Didn't he?
When she sat in that dark, cold cell on Liberty Island with dotted lines painted across her forehead and under her eye, assuredly waiting her execution, she had let herself imagine. She pretended that she had escaped, and managed to cross over. She pictured the look on his face when he saw her for the first time, the kiss and embrace with which he would greet her. She thought about movie nights that would start the same but end much differently, with him and her and a bed. She envisioned mornings spent beside him, warm in his arms, one of his legs between hers and a soft kiss pressed to her shoulder as she woke. She heard three words that she had vowed to never say to anyone except her sister and niece ever again. She saw a proposal and a house and a wedding. Someday. A baby. A family.
And she clung to this, to the fantasy, since it didn't matter and she was going to die.
Did it matter now?
Why wouldn't he ask?
She thinks about just asking him, but every time she decides she's going to she manages to convince herself to wait it out one more day, just another conversation, because surely tomorrow would be the day. She tells herself that maybe he does have a reason, something that is making him put it off for just a few days, and that she must be patient. After all, wasn't he patient with her?
So she is left to sit alone with her case files, cereal, and liquor, trying to wait good-naturedly for the phone to ring and his voice to finally ask the question she wants to hear. For Broyles to text her that he wants her in the Federal Building tomorrow bright and early, ready to give report and then go back out into the field.
Until then, she supposes, she's just left to wonder.
(I wonder why there's beer in the fridge that I would never buy myself and I wonder why his science movies are sitting by my television. I wonder if I should double check to see if she moved anything around and I wonder if I should finally take that laundry out of the washing machine and I wonder, I wonder, I wonder…)
She tries to ignore the voice inside her head that whispers to her as she lays between sheets that feel different somehow, late at night, that what she's really waiting for is the other shoe to drop.
(I wonder why this pillow smells like Peter.)
Summary: "She is damaged and broken, as is he, but she remains. Brave, strong, beautiful. And they must fight for each other." A collection of oneshots, centered around Peter and Olivia.
Rating: PG
Pairing: Peter/Olivia
Spoilers: General
Disclaimer: I do not own Fringe or its characters, storylines, etc. But if I had a swimming pool filled with money, I would totally buy it, make my own tv network, and give Fringe all the seasons ever.
Author's Note: Hi there. Remember me? Long time no see.
I suggest reading this to Son Lux's "Flickers". The song has a really strange, awesome vibe to it that goes with this.
Unbeta'd. All mistakes are mine.
Chapter 6 - Ask (Season 3, Post 3x08)
She wishes things could just effortlessly go back to the way they were. Before Peter left, before she was taken. Before she was replaced and no one seemed to notice. (Although, she's sure they noticed. She's sure they did. They may not have acted on anything, or confronted the other her. But they did notice. She's sure they noticed.)
They don't.
Broyles tells her to take time off of work, saying that she should rest and recover before returning to duty. She went through an ordeal, and she needs to take it easy for a little while. Everyone else seems to emphatically agree with him. And, look, she gets that she's been through a lot recently. She recognizes that they took over her mind and pumped her full of drugs and tried to kill her. But she's okay now. She feels fine. And she knows who she is.
Really, the only thing she feels like doing is trying to catch the bastards that did all of that shit to her. And she can do that better from her office than from her living room. At her office, there's always the background hum of people working in the lab, a sharp mind to bounce ideas off, and extra set of eyes to read the files and try to pick up on things she might've missed. And someone to bring her coffee and a sandwich at lunch when she forgets to eat.
At home, it's just her at the coffee table, her glasses on her nose and five or six file folders spread out in front of her. A bowl of dry corn flakes and a nearly-empty glass of whiskey sit on the floor by her feet. She can only read the files a handful of times before the words start to blur together, and it's so damn quiet that her mind starts to wander. She just isn't used to working in silence anymore, and noise doesn't distract her now. It helps her focus. Without it, her thoughts begin to drift. And then she starts to dwell on things that she shouldn't be thinking about, turning them over in her mind, like the fact that someone has been living in her apartment for the past few months and all the food in the refrigerator was bought by her and the glass she's drinking out of was washed by her and I wonder if she sat on the couch reading case files like this or if she went to the lab. I wonder who she liked to use as a sounding board and I wonder if they brought her black coffee with one sugar and turkey on wheat with lettuce, tomato, and mustard. I wonder if she pretended to drink my whiskey and that's why no one said anything and I wonder if she washed these sweatpants or if I did and I wonder, I wonder, I wonder.
(And she misses her office at the lab. And the people that work there. A lot. She wants to go back there and re-stake her claim on the place and its citizens, proving that they were never hers. It was her desk, they were her friends, and damn it, they noticed, alright?)
She wishes people were like rubber bands, that no matter how oddly they were stretched and contorted by some outside force, they snapped back completely, without hesitation, without complication.
They aren't.
Everyone treats her like she's some precious china doll, like she came back with the word 'fragile' stamped across her forehead in bold, red, capital letters. She's not different. She's Special Agent Olivia Dunham, Fringe Division, and she's strong, brave, and ready to go. So everyone can stop walking on eggshells around her, and thinking that if they so much as blink too hard in her direction she'll shatter into a billion pieces.
And Peter…
Well, she wishes Peter would just ask her out, for God's sake.
She crossed to another universe to save his life, bared her heart and soul to him to convince him to come back. Then she lost him for such a long time, but still, she clung to him. She thought about him over and over again so she wouldn't forget, so that he wouldn't be taken over by someone else's memories. Now, she's home. And she really wouldn't mind getting dinner sometime, you know?
She thought he wanted her. When he put his hand on her cheek after Jacksonville, it had felt like he wanted her. When they kissed over there, it had felt like he wanted her. When he tangled his fingers in her hair and parted his lips against her own, it had felt like he wanted her. When he agreed to come back for her, it had felt like he wanted her.
He held her hand in the hospital and kissed her forehead. Doesn't that mean something? Doesn't that mean he missed her too?
Then why won't he just ask?
He just calls mostly every evening and the conversation is:
"Hi."
"Hey."
"How are you?"
"Fine. How about you?"
"I'm alright. You're sure you're feeling okay?"
"Yeah. I feel fine."
"You're sure? Because Broyles said - "
"Don't worry about what Broyles said. I'm fine, I promise."
"Okay. You need anything?"
"No, I think I'm good."
"Okay. If you do, just call. At any time. You know it doesn't bother me."
"I know. Thanks, Peter."
"Don't worry about it."
"How's Walter?"
"He's as Walter as ever. He's in the kitchen baking something now. It smells…interesting."
"Hmmm. Well, I can't wait to hear how delicious it tasted."
"Of course."
…
"Well, I better go. I think Walter may be in the process of burning the house down. I'll call you tomorrow?"
"Yeah, that'd be great."
"Okay. Bye, Olivia."
"Bye."
Or some variation. And every time her phone rings and he is on the other end, she thinks that this is the conversation when he's finally going to ask.
And he never does.
Hell, she'll take drinks, if not dinner. Or an invitation to the nightly Bishop Bakery. Or he can just invite himself over. He used to invite himself over all the time. She couldn't count the number of times she found him on her doorstep - sometimes with a phone call, but many times without - holding a bag of Thai food and a DVD.
"I come bearing gifts. I've got delicious food in one hand and quality entertainment in the other. I trust that you have the alcohol."
"I think that I may have something to drink laying around this place somewhere. Good thing too, because if that movie you're holding is as good as the last one you brought, we're going to need it to make it to the end."
"That's half the fun, isn't it?"
And they would sit on the couch and watch anything ranging from cheap horror movies to The Universe to old black and white films starring people like Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. There would be two finished beverages on the table, empty food containers in the trash can in the kitchen. They would laugh at inappropriate times and he would try and impress her by rattling off random bits of movie trivia he knew.
And sometimes, halfway through the movie, their hands would touch where they rested together on the middle cushion of the couch. Neither of them would adjust their positions. Neither of them would pull away.
Every once in a while, he would call her sweetheart. And she didn't stop him.
(He hasn't called her that since she returned. She knows she's only been back for a week and a half, and it was really only every once in a while, but she wants to hear it all the same.)
On those nights, it had felt like he wanted her.
Had she read too much into it? She didn't think so. It was him, after all, who had tried to kiss her first. It was always him who called, him who came over, him who seemed to give, give, give while she chose what to receive.
She hadn't. It was impossible. He kissed her back. He came home.
So why wouldn't he just ask her?
She'd pushed him away for so long. She'd ignored the way he would brush up against her too many times for it to be accidental. She'd turned away when she felt his stare linger on her too long to be friendly, because this wasn't supposed to happen again, not after John.
Then he glimmered and left and it had hurt so much.
She realized that she had tried so hard to resist him. But somehow, Peter Bishop patiently toiled and chipped away at the barriers she put up. He wormed his way under her skin and into her heart and no matter how much she attempted to avoid it, Peter Bishop had won.
And she stopped fighting it, stopped being afraid. She breathed it in, drowned in it, and when she saw him again, she didn't hold anything back. It was her turn to give. And he received.
Didn't he?
When she sat in that dark, cold cell on Liberty Island with dotted lines painted across her forehead and under her eye, assuredly waiting her execution, she had let herself imagine. She pretended that she had escaped, and managed to cross over. She pictured the look on his face when he saw her for the first time, the kiss and embrace with which he would greet her. She thought about movie nights that would start the same but end much differently, with him and her and a bed. She envisioned mornings spent beside him, warm in his arms, one of his legs between hers and a soft kiss pressed to her shoulder as she woke. She heard three words that she had vowed to never say to anyone except her sister and niece ever again. She saw a proposal and a house and a wedding. Someday. A baby. A family.
And she clung to this, to the fantasy, since it didn't matter and she was going to die.
Did it matter now?
Why wouldn't he ask?
She thinks about just asking him, but every time she decides she's going to she manages to convince herself to wait it out one more day, just another conversation, because surely tomorrow would be the day. She tells herself that maybe he does have a reason, something that is making him put it off for just a few days, and that she must be patient. After all, wasn't he patient with her?
So she is left to sit alone with her case files, cereal, and liquor, trying to wait good-naturedly for the phone to ring and his voice to finally ask the question she wants to hear. For Broyles to text her that he wants her in the Federal Building tomorrow bright and early, ready to give report and then go back out into the field.
Until then, she supposes, she's just left to wonder.
(I wonder why there's beer in the fridge that I would never buy myself and I wonder why his science movies are sitting by my television. I wonder if I should double check to see if she moved anything around and I wonder if I should finally take that laundry out of the washing machine and I wonder, I wonder, I wonder…)
She tries to ignore the voice inside her head that whispers to her as she lays between sheets that feel different somehow, late at night, that what she's really waiting for is the other shoe to drop.
(I wonder why this pillow smells like Peter.)