Happy Birthday Olivia
Spoilers: Up through "The Cure"
Rating: PG-13-for a mild sexual reference
Paring: Peter/Olivia
He gets her a baseball cap, one that had been sitting crammed behind old t-shirts and shoes. It's black and just a little dusty. He washes it just to make sure nothing had crawled up in the side over the past twenty years. There's a white 'H' in fancy print right in the middle. His father had handed it to him on his eight birthday when he had come running into the lab, tears streaming down his child face, demanding to know why Walter had forgotten his birthday. Walter had thrust it into his open arms and promised to go out for ice cream after an hour or two.
He gets it for her, not because it's her birthday and everyone deserves one good gift, and not because he wants her to forget about the card she may or may not get in the next twenty-four hours, he gets it because he wants to. He wants her to have something, and a Harvard University hat from 1984 isn't something you find every day. It kind of reminds him of her, the rough bill with a frayed edge. The same edge he touched thirteen times a day for six years, the same edge he sees in her. He doesn't expect her to smile, or even take it. But when he drops it on her paper work, freshly laundered and almost grey with poor dye, she look up and, without question, places it on her head. Pulling her mass of golden locks through the hole in the back, she settles her hands on her chin and looks up at him, smiling. Thanks Peter. I needed one of these. He nods and doesn't tell her where it's from or how important it was-still is-to him. Her smile is enough, because she's forgotten the date and she forgotten the letter that may or may not come today, even if only for a moment. And he gave her that.
Watching her stride from the office later that night, a small grin still plastered to her face and blonde hair swaying back and forth in her makeshift ponytail, the same motion her hips seem to make when she's feeling flirty, which happens a lot around him, he whispers to a almost empty lab. Happy Birthday Olivia.