A/N - while this was intended to be a one shot, popular demand (always wanted to say that lol) I have written a second chapter. Okay then, enjoy. Possibly will add a third chapter on to it but this will NOT be a four shot. Sorry people. If I start this as another story Haemoglobin will never be finished.

Shiver

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"We talk and talk
Around it all,
How'd we end up here?"
- Maximo Park, Shiver

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The hospital was crowded and unfriendly. Olivia, having woken up just before they arrived at the federal building to drop Charlie off, had demanded to sit in the front seat and when they got to the hospital she insisted that she was fine and didn't need a check-up. The look in her eyes and his cursory glance over her battered body said otherwise and Peter was inclined to listen. So there they were, waiting for a nurse or a doctor to come over and show them to an examination room, with her sitting stoically still in an uncomfortable chair with his arm draped across the back of it. She was leaning, imperceptibly so, into his arm as she twisted her hands around one another, trying to ignore the odd looks people were giving them.

The bruises had began to throb painfully under her inflamed skin and she tried not to alert Peter to the crushing pain in her ribs – she suspected that at least three of them were broken or at least fractured. She noticed that a particularly formidable nurse was eyeing Peter in an odd sort of fashion and watched the woman move until it occurred to Olivia that this nurse probably thought Peter was an abusive boyfriend or husband. If only the nurse could have seen the man in question an hour ago, sweeping her into his arms like a night in shining FBI standard issue body armour. Although, she mused, he was wearing a suit over it. As exhaustion finally swept fully over her she leaned completely onto his shoulder, her head partly on his chest at a surprisingly comfortable angle, and in doing so she knocked his arm so that it curled around her own shoulders. She closed her eyes as heat rocketed through her torso and arms as she absorbed it from his body.

"Olivia Dunham?" A voice asked from somewhere in the vicinity of where the severe nurse had been. She sighed, not wanting to open her eyes, but was eventually forced to as Peter shook her ever so lightly. She made no effort to move from the chair or her position on his shoulder, so he turned oddly and lifted her much like he had in the warehouse and carried her through to the room the nurse indicated. Now, as he laid her down on the hard little bed, it was his turn not to move from her side. A female doctor and two nurses, both men looking rather dishevelled, came into the room then as Peter sat down in a chair in the far corner of the small room. The doctor gave him an odd look.

"I'm sorry, sir, but this room is for patients only. Unless of course you are family and the patient says you can stay," the doctor said in a tone that clearly suggested she didn't want him anywhere near her patient, but Olivia piped up form the bed.

"He can stay," she said in a quiet voice that broke Peter's heart. The doctor nodded grimly at the two male nurses, who left abruptly after, and looked back to Peter.

"Are you family?" It wasn't a question, more of an accusation, but Peter wasn't about to back down now. He nodded, his eyes flickering towards Olivia and silently praying she wouldn't kill him for what he was about to say.

"I'm her… husband," he tried to say with absolute certainty in case he tipped the doctor off but the hesitation seemed to have slipped her by. Thanking the Gods that she had not thrown his sorry ass out of the damn room, Peter sat back with smile. At the sudden change in the doctor's features Peter immediately stopped smiling. The woman looked ready to murder, and probably would have had it not been for the witnesses, and it was then that Peter realised what Olivia had picked up on earlier with the nurse giving him stink eye. They all thought he had done this to her.

"Fine. Okay then, Mrs. Dunham," she ground the name out through her clenched teeth, "I need you to sit up." Olivia did and the doctor began to examine the various cuts and bruises that dominated her arms. The white blouse that Olivia had been wearing was now torn at the sleeve slightly and had blood speckled down the front. The shirt was not dirty per se; it looked merely like it had been worn for longer than three days, and her slacks were still the same black that they had been the last time Peter had seen her.

Casting a vicious glance in Peter's direction, she removed the ripped article of clothing, revealing her mess of a torso. Her entire stomach, back, upper arms and chest was covered, inch-by-inch, in black and purple and yellow and green ugly splotches. They decorated a sickly pattern of pain up and down her body and both Peter and the doctor's fists clenched with anger. He looked away, fighting back the bile, as Olivia winced at the sudden rush of cold air that attacked her battered body. Thankfully, though Peter played it fast and loose with the word, there were no cuts that marred her macabre technicoloured skin. The doctor worked quickly and tried to make the exam as painless as possible for Olivia.

The rest of the examination was much of the same. X-rays were taken to ensure that no bones were broken – at Peter's insistence, though he was sure they all thought he was covering his tracks – which they weren't, only some bone bruising. The doctor muttered something about coming right back and left them alone for the moment. Olivia, who now wore hospital scrubs courtesy of one of the interns who had accompanied the doctor during the x-rays, turned her head tiredly in Peter's direction. They were in a different room now, this one being a little a larger than the last one, with a window and two chairs. A long comfortable bed was also in this room, which is where Olivia lay.

"Hey…" she said softly. He moved his chair closer to the bed so that the wood of it was pressed tightly against the metal of the gurney. She placed a palm on his cheek and slowly stroked his unshaven cheek with her thumb. He placed a chaste kiss on the inside of her wrist as she did so.

"You had me so… worried," he said gently, his voice nearly breaking in the middle of the sentence. She looked away quickly and then back at him just as suddenly.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. He shook his head vigorously.

"No. I am. I should have trusted you. I should have found you sooner. I should have…" he stopped his rant as the doctor entered, this time with two police officers behind her. She motioned to Peter, ignoring the fairly intimate position he was in.

"That's him." The woman said in a cold, professional tone that had a hint of smugness about it. Peter frowned, as did Olivia who was now clutching his burgundy silk shirt with all her might. The beefier looking officer, dark-skinned and austere looking, beckoned to Peter and said gruffly, "Can you come with us, sir?" Peter nodded but when he tried to get up he found that Olivia's small hand, however injured, was holding on for dear life. She yelled 'NO!' at the top of her voice when he tried to pry her hand off his shirt to no avail. Deciding that it was not worth the fight, he sat back down; he wrapped her hand in his and mouthed the word 'later' to the two officers. They nodded and retreated back outside, both sending glares at the puzzled looking doctor. Clearly they thought she had wasted their time by calling them.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Dunham, but would you mind telling me how exactly this happened?" She eventually asked. Peter's head had begun to pound at some point during the x-raying but he turned to the doctor nonetheless.

"That's… classified information. Sorry." He said with an air of finality that hinted at the doctor to drop it. She did not.

"Classified? What on earth do you mean classified?"

"I mean that, as part of the FBI, I'm not at liberty to discuss ongoing investigations with civilians such as yourself." Peter smirked to himself. He sounded exactly like Olivia when she was interrogating a suspect or just generally being her FBI self. If she were conscious – having drifted off after the officer's left, reassured that Peter was here - she would have been proud. The doctor nodded and excused herself then, obviously embarrassed. Peter guessed that she was probably going to shoo away the two policemen, and, deciding he didn't care, turned back to stare at the sleeping blonde.

She had made it clear to him a while ago after he asked her out to dinner that they were professionals, colleagues, and that they must remain that way in order for them to effectively do their jobs. Peter had scoffed at her and said that he had asked her out because he didn't want to eat alone, not because it was a date. She had laughed then, her mind at ease, while he faked a grin and pretended that it wasn't torturous to know that she didn't feel the same way.

Yes, he thought, I have become way too attached to her. Far too attached. But as he assessed his options and the events of the past year, he found that he wouldn't trade any moment of it for the entire world; besides he got to spend every moment of it with her. And that, to him, was completely worth being 'just friends'.

Thank you to:

Fantasy Cat: Thank you very much.

JT4Life: Thank you for favoring the story, it means alot. I had doubts about the story initially but the fact that you liked it enough to put it i your favourites is very humbling.

Ocein: Funny you should mention that, yes Taken did have a little to do with this but mainly it was the song Shiver by Maximo Park. And as for all the alerting, favoring and what not, I'm being mushy and also thanking you from the bottom of this little heart of mine :).

wjobsessed: Thank you very much. Okay, yeh sorry, this is pretty much what happens after. Yeah, see they don't kiss, it's more a friendship kind of story. I hate that too but that's unfortunately the way it goes.

Jasper303: Thank you, I love Dark!Peter and Protective!Peter. So much better than antsy Peter who wants to run every time something bad happens. Glad you liked it.