Title: Shuffle to the Right
Pairings: Various. Mostly Bolivia.
A/N: Another shuffle challenge. No real spoilers. Feedback is wondrous.
Disclaimer: So totally not mine. I don't own a scrape of Fringe.
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Unknown song:
There are tears.
Tears on the window, on the table, on the bottle, and on her eyelashes.
He wants to tell her it will change, that the undoing will stop and rewind itself, that the inevitable won't come. But instead, he says nothing, just holds her wrist and her neck as she leans into him and lets her breath gush out in little sobs.
When she's recomposed and fresh drinks are ordered, he tells her that while nothing with change on its own, what they're doing does count.
Olivia smiles behind the new bottle of beer because, from Peter, even the wrong words help.
Sand in my shoes, Dido:
This isn't like the first night.
The first night was hard; the sand was harsh, the coffee was cold, his Farsi was rusty. Nothing fit together as he wanted, everything was wrong. She wasn't here.
But, he reminded himself, that wasn't likely to happen at all. She had hauled his ungrateful ass out of the desert once. What were his chances that she would do it again? He shouldered his lone bag and thought solemnly of his father's misinterpretation.
"Liv, I can't."
The argument that ensued made him cringe in retrospect. Cold words and dirty accusations were thrown, bruising each other and only fuelling the wildfire between them.
Settling himself down on his hotel bed, he opened his bag and gazed at the lone pair of industrial gray wool socks.
The best cure for cold feet, his father had said.
We Both Go Down Together, The Decemberists:
They ran.
The world was crashing down around their ears on both sides of the multiverse. Something had fallen through, something had given way and now, now the Opponent was striking back with fearful force.
Buildings crumbled and turned to dust before their eyes, windows cracked, and those few civilians who were still alive screamed. The cacophony set both of them on edge, Olivia so much so that when a stunned stranger fell before them, she accidentally set the car behind him on fire.
Peter was starting to feel the helpless pull that disaster places on all surrounding souls. Panic ebbed and lapped at the edges of his vision and with a startling clarity, he realised they weren't going to make it out alive.
Olivia closed her eyes and reached out to him, afraid to gaze to intensely at anything, especially Peter. He reached back, held her close, and kissed her as the rift between the worlds opened on the other side of the city. Chaos was set free like a young animal, bounding and skittering across the rubble in unbalanced leaps, approaching them with gaining speed.
With a resounding crack, the skies too, opened up, the rain fell, and all Hell was let loose.
The Band's Still Playing, Lennie Gallant:
Walter was shaking with nerves and bustling with excitement, Broyles could barely keep from shouting, and Nina Sharpe was as cold and silent as stone.
Astrid, Peter, and Olivia were all unconscious, laying in a heap near the rusted doors of the tank. Time passed; Walter kept up his shaking; Broyles, unable to contain himself and now barking orders; and still, Nina Sharpe did not speak. Surrounding them, the outside world and the science unravelled at an unbelievable pace.
"STOP IT."
Nina Sharpe's voice carried heavily through the damp, dim-lit lab.
All motion halted, even Broyles was silenced.
Her voice lost its stony qualities and gained an icy, too-professional edge. Walter stopped shaking when the final instructions were commanded.
"Kill them."
I Fought The Angels:
John Scott was tired. Navigating the pathways of his ex-lover's mind without her noticing was a challenging task at the best of times, made even more difficult with the temporary insertion of Nick Lane. Keeping to the shadows and avoiding all his counterparts, former-Agent Scott wondered just how many people could fit inside a brain.
Exhausted and fed-up, John pursued alter-Olivia, the child Olive, who acted like a quiet, content young girl until something happened and she blew something up. Taking the girl aside in a calm corner of grown-Olivia's mind, he patiently explained that explosions and fire balls weren't in the best interest of everything.
Needless to say, John wasn't surprised when the toes of his shoes started to smoke.
"Look here," he said strongly to the sullen child. "Speaking's out of bounds."
La Tempete, Lennie Gallant:
Despite the hour on the clock, Peter couldn't sleep. It was his first night back in the states and it was marked by dreams he couldn't believe he was having.
No matter what he tried, behind his gritty eyes he always saw the haughty blonde with a saviour-complex on legs long even to make him sigh.
In each dream, he couldn't hear her voice, but he could simply tell it was her. And in that same sense of knowing, he knew, too, that the infant in her arms was theirs.
El Tango De Roxanne, from Moulin Rouge!:
In a different universe, the war hadn't yet arrived and they were still testing her.
Inside of Olivia, the tension mounted each day with a growing force. She had even go so far as to contact her creator, saying that unless something happened soon, she would implode with the anticipation.
In response, Bell told her to get on the elevator.
The machine plummeted.
Over the intercom, a terrified Olivia heard the voice of her creator; calm, collected, amused.
"Stop the elevator, Olivia."
She threw herself at the panel of buttons, madly hitting every key.
"With your mind."
Olivia screamed, her lungs burning, her eyes streaming, her soul shaken.
With terrifying force, the machine jammed into place, cables springing taut, a mere 11 inches off the shaft floor.
Unknown:
Sweaty, satiated, calm, and breathing deeply, Olivia was nearly asleep against his chest. From somewhere inside the dark corners of her mind, a question sprung forth.
"Why?"
The baritone rumbles through her, more felt than heard. "Why what?"
She curls up closer before finishing the question, her ear pressed over the steady, reassuring tha-thump of his heart. She asks, and then waits on baited breath for the repercussions her sleepy brain didn't think about earlier. "Why did you come back?"
In place of anger she gets strokes, broad ones across her back, over her hair; soft, gentle ones along her collar and jawbones. "Because," he kisses her forehead, fingers tracing the outside-edge of her breast and creeping down her sides before following her hip bone and coming back up again. "You went all the way to the desert for me.
"I wasn't going to leave you to go alone, and then you didn't go at all."
Save Me, Jem:
This is exactly what she needed. Peter's breath fell heavy in her ears, her own pulse thrummed, and she caught herself groaning happily as the entanglement continued.
Once upon a time, it had been colleagues, friends, really, sitting on a couch and having drinks- two people with so much chemistry that Astrid and the Harvard lab had to kick them out.
"Just go and do something. Get it over with, already!" Astrid, it would seem, had a knack to complain.
Touches, whispers, and kisses all reaches, stretched, pulled themselves towards one astounding moment, and inside herself, Olivia sincerely hoped that Peter wasn't as impatient as Astrid was.