Title: Five Times Peter Talked To Olivia After Hours (And One Time He Didn't)
Fandom: Fringe
Summary: Five times Peter Bishop called Olivia Dunham after hours, and one time he tried
Genre(s): Gen, Friendship. Peter/Olivia UST if you squint hard
Character(s): Olivia Dunham, Peter Bishop; with brief mentions/appearances of Walter Bishop and Astrid Farnsworth
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Spoilers for 01x10 "Safe" and the teaser trailer for 01x11 "Bound" mentioned.
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Not mine
A/N: Written for Roxie Ann for Yuletide 2008. I would like to thank my betas: BabyGhia, norda, and pyg_klb. I appreciate your help and your advice.
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i)
She answers just before her phone clicks over to voice-mail.
"It's me," Peter says, identifying himself. He suspects he'd be the only person calling her at this late hour.
"What's happened?" she asks immediately.
He breaks the bad news the only way he knows how. "The FDA is going ahead with the trials."
She's so quiet he thinks she's hung up on him. "I thought they would," Olivia says after a moment. He can hear the frustration in her words. "I wish we could have offered them more concrete evidence. Putting that fungus on the market is a bad idea."
He shares her frustration. He had expected this outcome, but he had not wanted this outcome. For once, he wanted people to surprise him.
"Me too," is all he can say.
Olivia says nothing. Should he say goodnight and hang up? He knows Olivia sees the trials going forward as a defeat and that she does not accept defeat easily. She proved that to him the first time they met. She solidified the point with her second jaunt in the tank.
She also takes things to heart. He imagines she's internalizing the defeat and saving it to punish herself with at a latter date. For reasons he doesn't quite understand, the thought makes him uncomfortable.
"We did what we could, Olivia," he assures her. He believes it. He wishes he had the words to make her believe it too.
ii)
Her landline rings.
The name on the caller ID gives her pause. On the second ring, she remembers that her cellphone is out of commission. By the third ring, she realizes that this call might be important. The fourth ring sounds just as Olivia picks up the phone.
A familiar voice greets her on the other end. She glances at the clock on her kitchen stove. "You're up late," she notes.
Even over the phone, Peter sounds tired. "It's a little hard to sleep when your bedroom's been turned into an electronics lab," he tells her gruffly.
Olivia leans against the island in her kitchen. She leans on her elbows, pressing the phone between her ear and her shoulder. "Walter?" she guesses.
"Who else?" he answers "He has your cellphone in pieces, scattered all over one side of the bed."
"Only one side?" Olivia asks, unable to stop herself from asking.
"Yes," says Peter. "The other side's covered in God knows what kind of electrical equipment." There is a pause, in which Olivia thinks she hears a loud crack. "And fruit snacks."
Olivia's stomach rumbles at the mention of food. She ignores her body's complaint. "Fruit snacks," she repeats, just to make certain she's heard him correctly.
"Fruit snacks," he confirms. "Scooby Doo fruit snacks. I kid you not." Olivia smiles at the mental image- she must be more tired than she thought. "So your phone may come back to you...enhanced. And covered in goo."
"He really doesn't have to fix it," Olivia insists for the third time that day. "It's as much my fault as it is his that it was broken in the first place. My plan covers a replacement. I can get a new one tomorrow."
Her protests go unheard once again. Even over the phone line, the crash in the background is unmistakable. Peter says a hasty goodbye, hanging up before Olivia can reply in kind. She stands back up, stretching her muscles. Her stomach rumbles again. She puts the phone back in its cradle, and goes looking for the cereal.
iii)
He dials her cell phone number without thinking about it.
Only when he gets the recorded message about disconnection does he realize his mistake. He'd dialed Olivia's old cell number out of habit. He hadn't forgotten her new number. He didn't forget number sequences, especially a number sequence as simplistic as a telephone number. No, he'd been so preoccupied with the events of this afternoon that he'd dialed on autopilot. He dials the correct number.
She picks up on the second ring. "You were expecting this call, weren't you?" he asks her, although it's more of a statement than a question.
"A little bit, yeah," she admits. He's surprised at how easily he drew that admission from her. It seems like he isn't the only one thrown off balance by the events of the day. "You're aware that we probably shouldn't talk about this, aren't you?" she continues.
"Unethical?" he asked her. Her silence is confirmation of her suspicion. "Olivia, since when have ethics ever bothered me?" Again, that tell- tale silence. He smiles. "You want to know what I said to him? When he asked me about you?"
A pause. "Yes."
"I said that you were a workaholic, obsessive pain in the ass," he tells her. He's rewarded by the strained sounds of Olivia Dunham trying not to laugh out loud. "Not in so many words,"he adds.
He and Olivia chat for a few more minutes. They say their goodnights, and he hangs up.
He leans back in the uncomfortable hotel chair. That little white lie was for Olivia's benefit, he tells himself. He basically told her the truth, but left enough room to allow himself an out if questioned about it. Yet he still feels uncomfortable with telling Olivia half-truths. The only way he feels better about it is the promise to himself that one day, he'll tell her what was really said in that office.
How would I describe Olivia Dunham? he says in memory. Better than me. And a hell of a lot better than you.
iv)
Olivia isn't answering her phone.
Peter leaves the second message of the day. He tries to ignore the suspicion stirring in the back of his mind. There is nothing wrong. She could be in the shower. She could be asleep. She could be stuck in traffic in an area with lousy cell coverage. There are several reasons Olivia might not be answering.
None of which involve harm coming to her. The problem is that none of those reasons hold up under careful consideration....
"Have you heard from Olivia today?"
He was so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he didn't hear Astrid come into the lab. Looking at her, suspicion surges to the forefront of his mind. He knows that look-and it does not bode well.
"No, why?" he asks her, trying to keep the worry out of his voice. "Is something wrong?"
"She's missing...."
v)
"Olivia. Just listen."
Olivia lies in her bed. The thin strap of her pajama top twists around the cord of her phone charger. The tangle presses against her bruised shoulder, and she shifts to avoid the pressure. The phone slips from her ear. She grabs at it, bring it back as quickly as possible. She still misses the first few seconds of the message she's supposed to be listening to.
-"...Sunday...pink f-....seven days..."
The words are garbled, an electronic voice trace being transmitted over a phone line. Olivia frowns, annoyed that she can understand so little of the message.
Peter's voice replaces the static. "Did you get any of that?" he asks. She hears the hope in his voice. She hates to disappoint him.
"I missed the first few seconds," she tells him. "Play it again."
"You didn't miss anything in the first few seconds," he says. "Don't worry, we'll make something out of it. Walter and Astrid are raiding the AV labs as speak."
Olivia still remembers the last time Walter and Astrid went to the AV labs. "Do they know they're coming?" she asks half-seriously. Peter makes a sound that might be laughter, and Olivia smiles. She wishes it didn't hurt to smile.
As if he senses her pain, Peter asks how she's doing. Over the course of the past week, Olivia has come to hate this question. She appreciates the concern. But there's only so much of it she can take before she wants to start screaming at the world that she'll be be fine. She didn't break then, and she's not about to break now.
"I'd be better if they'd clear me to come back to work," she says, in lieu of really answering his question.
He lets it go. His backing off doesn't make her feel any better. It just makes her feel like he's humoring her. She wants him to argue with her. The sense that he's taking care of her scrapes a nerve she doesn't know how to soothe.
"You think we don't want you back?" he says. "Trust me, we do. I meant it when I said you were never allowed another sick day again. Did I tell you what Walter said to Agent Llewellyn yesterday?"
Olivia tells him no, he has not. He tells her, and Olivia hurts from laughter. Peter asks once more if she's alright, and Olivia is not so patient with him this time. They end the conversation on a sour note, and Olivia drops the phone to the floor in a snit of temper.
She tries to forget about the conversation. She tries to find a spot in bed that eases her bruised and battered body. Her mind is not so easily put to rest. She stares at the wall and wonders why Peter's concern unsettles her as much as it does.
vi)
She's sitting in a bar when her new cellphone goes off.
The ringtone song is obnoxious but appropriate. Olivia sings the words in her head as she fishes her phone out from the depths of her purse. Excusing herself from the crowd at the bar, she takes her conversation outside.
"Do you realize what you've done?" Peter demands. In a pleasant state of semi-inebriation, Olivia considers that she might have done to Peter to warrant this reaction. She's considered the incident with the slime mold, the sick day she took last month, and the conversation with the Russian model. When he tells her what's wrong, she bursts out laughing.
"He worked so hard on it," Olivia defended her decision. "It seemed fair that he keep it."
"You could have at least deactivated it first."
She stares at the alley wall in her confusion. "I did deactivate it."
A long pause on the other end, then, slowly, Peter said, "I don't know how he's getting service without having a plan. I don't want to know...."
Suddenly, her buzz is gone and the alley wall looks like a lovely place to bang her head against. Repeatedly. "Are you saying..."
"Olivia," he grinds out. "The man is a menace with a cellphone. He's called China. Twice. He's ordered expensive, classified equipment and charged it to the FBI. I'm almost afraid to know what he's going to do next."
As if on cue, Olivia's cellphone beeps. Olivia looks at the display. Then she looks again to see if she's seeing that correctly.
"He's calling me, that's what he's doing," she tells Peter. "Wait a minute."
As hers is a new phone, it takes Olivia a moment longer to figure out how to make it do what she wants it to do. Nonetheless, she manages to transfer Walter's in-coming call to Peter's phone. Olivia ends the call; with a flip of her thumb, she set her phone on silent.
Slipping it in her pocket, she rejoins her friends at the bar.
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fin