Playing with other people's toys always was more fun...
Peter burst into the bathroom cradling his right arm to his chest. Effectively startling Olivia, who having not long returned from her morning run, had showered and dressed but had yet to finish dealing with her hair. He hurried directly to the sink and as he went, Oliva noticed the reason for his haste. His hand had been wrapped in - what was once, but never would be again - a kitchen dishtowel. Its simple pattern should have been blue and white checked, but where the white was once brilliant, it had turned a vivid, angry red and the blue crosshatched lines appeared almost black, as his blood leached into the fibres where it had been hurriedly wrapped around his fingers.
Olivia gravitated to Peter, laying a hand on his back once she reached him. She raised up onto her toes to peer over his right shoulder as Peter began unwrapping his grizzly parcel. The sodden towel flopped wetly when he discarded it into the basin and his wounded fingers were revealed. They featured a linear slice across three of them, the incision sparing only his index finger and thumb. His hand trembled with the onset of his pain, the initial numbness quickly wearing off, as he examined the cut. It appeared he could not straighten his fingers past their lazy curl.
She took his hand and supported it, gently encouraging him to twist his wrist a little more so she could see the damage for herself. "What happened?" she asked as she assessed the wound, a grimace pulling at her lips and exposing her teeth which were clamped tightly together. She sucked a hissing breath through them and her cheeks pulled a little more viciously at her lips, not out of revulsion, but a response to Peter's injury; his pain hurt her. She found it all too easy to imagine, how he must feel. If she allowed herself to become too deeply engaged, it would come to feel almost as if it were her hand that wheedled the knife as it slipped, that it was her own flesh that had been marred.
Even in the instances that it was her who was hurt, it was not her discomfort that worried her most. She'd had a lifetime of experience in dealing with pain and had developed an arsenal of coping mechanisms and strategies, to minimise its effect and any fear of it. Rather it was her concern for Peter that primarily made her uneasy. It was the worry and sometimes flat out terrified anguish – for and caused by her - so evident in his eyes and the depended creasing of his brow, which never failed to disturb her more completely than the neural mechanism of her pain.
Walter had once hypothesised that the connection she and Peter had forged, through shifts both time and space, was in a very real way, akin to clairsentience. He said that she in particular would be conditioned to construct and sustain such a bond, in part due to natural predisposition towards empathetic attachments; an attribute that would only have been heightened by her childhood exposure to Cortexiphan. That she met and found a moment of comfort with Peter at an incredibly stressful time - the precise moment the scope of her abilities first began to be realised - no doubt, also played a substantial role.
For Peter, the disappearance of Walter, however, was a different matter altogether. That event had cut Peter more deeply, more profoundly than any mere wound to his flesh. They had searched exhaustively during the year since that point, yet they had been unable to find anything even remotely resembling a satisfactory answer. Walter Bishop, had one day, simply vanished.
Peter hissed as she caused his fingers to stretch as she examined the cut. "Sorry," she breathed. The blade must have been wickedly sharp, which she realised, was a blessing cloaked within the curse; there was no tearing or puckering, just a clean, deep cut. Still, she worried.
"I was using the wrong tool to strip a length of wire for that new socket you want in the utility room. The box cutter slipped, this is the result," he explained ruefully. "Stupid. I should have taken a moment to find the wire stripper." He shook his head following his admission, annoyed at himself.
Olivia checked the wound thoroughly. The bleeding was slowing and there was no evidence of gushing from arteries or slower oozing indicating damage to any major veins, though the incision was deep especially on his middle finger, which would have taken the brunt of the force of the slipping blade. "It's a clean cut, but it's deep and I think you're going to need to get it checked at the ER, there could be tendon damage." She let go of his wrist, and stretched up to retrieve the first aid kit from the top of the medicine cabinet. "At the very least, you're going to need gluing up."
"Should I wash it?" Peter asked, somewhat apprehensively, sounding unerringly like Etta now, when coming home proudly bearing battle wounds of an active child, yet ruing the fact that they had to be dealt with once earned. Grazed knees, minor cuts and abrasions were nothing new in their house, and was the reason for them having such a well-stocked first aid kit. This was different though, blood still lazily seeped from Peter's wound even as his blood cells worked to clot as the healing process began.
"Yes, in cool water," she answered without hesitation. "Use some soap if you can." That wince again, tweaking his face as he anticipated the sting. She felt it; a jabbing sensation in her gut.
"You'll live," she assured him. She set the plastic case down on the counter to the side of the sink, opened it and began sorting through the contents, looking for a few packs of iodine dressing.
"What time is Etta due home?" she queried. Rachel, Greg and the kids were visiting Boston and thankfully they'd arranged to take Etta for the day. Spending time with her older cousins was Etta's idea of heaven and the draw of a Saturday morning at the park and lunch out with them had her almost too excited to sleep the night before.
"They said that they had lunch reservations at one, so they should be back before three," Peter estimated.
It emerged that Greg had been offered a promotion, if he was willing to relocate to his company's Boston office. Rachel was keen for him to take it, so they had used a long weekend for Greg to visit the office and to just spend time in the city with the family.
Olivia still found it odd that Greg - in this timeline at least - was not as much of a scum-bucket as she remembered him and still had difficulties in setting her prejudice's aside. She had initially felt that it could only be a matter of time before he reverted back to, what she had assumed was, type. But those expectations had, so far, proven unfounded and slowly but surely her initial worries were eroding.
She hoped they would move, she had very much missed spending time with her sister and Ella.
Then there were the surprise packages of Eddie and in a very different - yet no less surprising – way, Greg.
The circumstances that had driven him and Rachel apart in her original timeline, had simply not occurred in this one. This Greg Blake was a different man to the one she had learned to despise. The existence of Eddie and the happiness of the entire Blake family were testament to the differences in him and Olivia was making a conscious effort to not allow herself to harbour the ghost of the man she once knew. Especially considering that such, apparently unfounded, discrimination would come at the expense of not only her relationship with him, but his entire family. It would also have a knock on effect for Peter, and more notably, to Etta. She hoped that Greg would not slip and that her previously sketchy relationship with him might actually be able flourish.
"I'll call Rach, let her know that we have to get you checked over at the ER. She has her key so it shouldn't be a problem." Their new place had plenty of space and so they had invited them all to stay. The house had three generous bedrooms, one of which was Etta's and she was thrilled to be sharing with her cousins for the weekend.
Although there were eight years between the girls, the two were very close. Ella doted on Etta, while their daughter aspired to be just like her older cousin.
Etta loved Eddie too, he challenged her on a physical level and she was determined to do everything he could, though, as he had three years on her, she sometimes became frustrated when he proved better at certain things than she was. But Etta was fast and deceptively strong for her size and what she lacked in stature, she made up for with her ardent resolve to succeed. 'Typical Dunham' Peter said of her, especially when her tenacity had the habit of landing their child in trouble of one form or another. Olivia would only roll her eyes and snort in reply, he knew why.
Peter had by now set the temperature of the faucet, and was building up the courage to thrust his hand underneath. Olivia noticed his reticence. "Peter?" He looked up meeting her eyes once more. "Quit stalling," she advised firmly, though not unkindly, in what she inwardly thought of as her 'Mom voice'. He nodded with a smile, held his breath and at last eased his fingers into the flow. A forced mewl escaped him as the initial burn ignited and raced through his scorched nerves. The trembling increased momentarily until the pain subsided a little and the water sluicing into the basin graduated from bright red to a muted pink. He seized the moment, grabbing a bar of soap he swiped it over his fingers in an upward motion, repeating three times under the water, then three more once he'd turned the water off, allowing suds to develop rather than be instantly washed away.
And that was when Olivia's olfactory senses were viciously attacked by a combination of smells.
Firstly there was the sharp, iron odour of blood, which she had been aware of since the moment Peter had revealed his injury, and until a moment ago hadn't been an issue. What had changed was that the smell was now mingling repugnantly with the soap.
Each individual smell had been magnified and somehow altered until it became simply overwhelming. Filling the air around her until it became so thick that it was no longer just a scent, but a taste. The sensation in her mouth grew and she could feel a bloody foam building in volume, choking her with a pink lather far richer than the soapy one Peter had managed to work up on his hands.
Her eyes widened and she felt herself pale dramatically within the space of only a couple of seconds. Her mind supplied the words she was unable to voice, 'Oh shit.' She spun away from the sink already gagging against the phantom foam as she darted for the toilet. Thankfully she found the toilet lid-lock disengaged and the lid up. Normally she would have scolded herself for not re-engaging it after use, but she was glad of her slip up, because she didn't have a second to spare. Her stomach rebelled and she lost the entirety of her breakfast in one violent act of purging.
The tables turned, and it was Peter's moment for worry. He bent down at her back and she knew he hadn't rinsed off before he came to her aid. She made a weak attempt to bat him away, to fend off the smell that had once again strengthened with his presence and which triggered a second bout of retching. "Get that away from me, rinse off," she managed to desperately choke out, before another round of heaving began.
When it stopped she flushed but rather than getting up she paused, not yet daring to move. She closed her eyes and conducted a self-assessment of her condition to see if it was safe to conclude her communion with the porcelain God.
Peter interrupted her analysis as he returned. This time his hand wrapped in a second clean towel, this one dry and thankfully soap-stink free. "Are you ok?" he asked softly, carefully rubbing his uninjured hand lightly across her shoulders. "Blood doesn't usually bother you."
"It wasn't the blood, it's that smell!" came her reply, still with her head hovering above the toilet bowl. Just voicing the idea brought with it a recollection so strong that it very nearly caused her to gag again. She pulled a disgusted face and shook her head, trying to erase the thought, with only a little success. Still she felt that the immediate danger had passed and the stronger impulse became the desire to freshen up.
She retreated from the toilet and made for the sink. She wanted desperately to bend and slurp cool water as it flowed directly from the tap, firstly to rinse her mouth and then to get a gloriously cold drink. But there was something she must attend to first. She gingerly picked up the offending bar of soap from the dish to the right of the hot tap. Holding it in her left hand, at arm's length between thumb and index finger. Maintaining the minimum contact possible with the repulsive item, she turned towards the bin, then flipped the lid up with her foot on the pedal and stooped slightly to ensure she didn't miss while dropping it in. She allowed the lid to drop down with tuneless yet immensely satisfying clang. She rinsed her hands immediately, ridding all traces of the still wet slippery residue from her fingertips. Then, finally, she got to rinse her mouth and have her drink.
She smiled as she straightened up, feeling altogether better about things.
"While you're at the hospital, I need to visit the pharmacy. We need to get some liquid hand wash, one that doesn't smell, even remotely, like soap," she said, then obsessively sniffed at her fingers, checking that there was no discernible scent lingering. All good as far as she could tell. She looked back up to find Peters concerned, confused gaze still locked onto her.
"And one other thing. I think I should probably buy a pregnancy test."
AN: I haven't done much in the way of writing for a while. This came from a single idea demanding some attention and as I wrote quickly became a 'Where might they be now?' sprawling ramble. I enjoyed writing it & hopefully there's something enjoyable in it for you.
Cheers all.
C. Green.