JANUARY

She couldn't believe she was going to ask him to do this.

It was his fault; he had to know that.

This morning she'd woken up from the dream, possessed. He'd been inside her head from three feet away. The more she thought about it, the less she could convince herself that he hadn't done it. He had to have done it, consciously or not. Which meant he could do it, and could do it again. The more she pondered it, the more firmly she decided it could be an almost perfect solution to the attraction she felt--and to the attraction he had made clear he felt towards her. Removed from the physical, it would be so detached and simple, incapable of destroying their lives with complex entanglements.

She went looking and she found him in their room.

He was sitting up in bed, those sleek shoulders curled around a book. She didn't care what book it was. He was so goddamn good to look at.

She paused at the door and he waited for her to say something, watching with an open expression.

"Peter," she said. I don't know how to ask for this, she thought.

Peter's skin glimmered silently, a testament to her apprehension. She knotted her hands. She wanted him to infer, to save her the indignity of specification, yet all he gave her was his unwavering focus. She couldn't tell if or how he was reading her, just hoped fervently that he was. With a deep breath she pushed her thoughts to the surface, waiting for him to skim them, to take them up and, through them, understand her. She wanted him to, for once.

Then, looking closer, she realized he'd already done it. Maybe before she'd even entered the room. His wide pupils. The tension across his chest. The face that was suddenly very difficult to watch in its false neutrality. She glanced away toward the lines of his body, inventing the vectors that disappeared under his blankets. She felt like she knew them all, though she'd never had her hands on him that way and didn't intend to. That old feeling of inevitability had been following her around like a ghost; it was probably the only justification that would make tonight's display bearable to her when she looked back upon it. Her nerves were humming like a tuning fork.

Peter put the book aside without saving his place. Maybe he hadn't even been reading. Maybe the book had been a decoy, an Olivia-blind, meant to lure her close enough before she got scared and bolted. It made her wonder how good he really was: how quickly had he discovered that she'd decided to ask? Was it before lunch? On the ride home? For god's sake, yesterday, before she even knew herself? Magnificent liar that he was, she hadn't had a clue.

Then she felt him invisibly on her back, his mental touch more like a curling wind than the force she'd expected. She didn't remember it being so gentle, so controlled. It was like a caress, and that took her aback. He looked at her with the simplest of questions: coming or going? Yes or no? And, as it seemed was always there: I love you, which wasn't a question at all but answered several of hers. She moved forward. The push at her back was firing a set of neurons she thought he'd take longer to get to. She was weaving on her feet, she knew it, and she might have been embarrassed but he was fixing her with those blisteringly intelligent eyes and who was she to argue? He was the sphinx, inviting her into riddles she would be lost trying to solve.

She got close to him and he made no motion to draw back the blankets. Instead he opened his arms and let her lift her feet to climb upon the mattress, her knees across his thighs and her face filled with nervous hope. It was not something she did, showing hope on her face. It wasn't something she did, showing anything on her face. He looked up at her inscrutably, his eyes were as sharp and penetrating as they'd ever been, studying not her face but something beneath it. She wanted him to say something just so she wouldn't be the last one who'd said something, but it was increasingly clear he wasn't going to give her that satisfaction.

He let her sit there for a long moment. He knew she was waiting, expecting him to move on her desires, but he wanted his moment with nothing in the way. No diversion--even of his own making--that would steal his focus.

He held her hands still, telling her in no uncertain terms that she could give him a minute at least because it was all he was asking. As heated as she was, she looked down at him directly and agreed with her stillness and his face broke her heart a million times over. That boy's face. The face she woke up to. The face that was making her want to abandon this and just go to sleep, his voice vibrating against the back of her neck and his arms around her. Of course, that whole business was part of the problem: she was filled to capacity with iterations of that face. It had made her promises she had waited long enough to call. She had waited long enough to admit she wanted to call them.

He was a beautiful man. She thought that she regretted that he was wearing a shirt, and, as if on cue, he took it off. Her vision filled with honey-white skin, his slight build relaxed over a cloud of pillows. Olivia's head dipped involuntarily toward his chest, just slightly, and she bit her lip which Peter noted with no small satisfaction.

Peter. It echoed in her heart, more in images than words: Peter comforting her against his chest. Peter laying with her under blankets in an ice-cold room. Peter, just Peter, his sweet, guarded face watching her do ridiculous things and hoping against hope that she'd succeed. And honestly, as tame and clothed as these things were they only added to the vertical drop of her stomach as her vision clung to his half-naked body. She was trying hard not to go further, not to throw away her last vestiges of cover; he was staring at her and he could know every thought she had if he only tried, and it just seemed so futile to pretend otherwise.

It crossed her mind at that moment that the things she would be most afraid of him knowing had already been given away when she came into the room, wanting what she wanted. There was no more damage to do. With that, she gave up trying to censor herself and the images came in a flood, images she didn't control but hungrily consumed: his lithe body in nothing but boxers in bed beside her, the intimate slide of his long leg between hers as they fell asleep, a kiss in a dark car with lips that tasted like ice cream.

Apparently he was listening, which she had ambivalently expected after all, and he found no faults with her catalogue. He stretched up off his pillows and she just folded toward their intersection with a barely-open mouth.

She held back a sigh, afraid it would be be his name, and his body came up behind the lips that found hers. Those long arms were leveraged against her and every pound of pressure was a measure of his approval. He kissed her slowly, more relaxed than either of them felt. He was so comfortable with physical affection, unafraid to be graceful, knowing instinctively where to lay his hands. He hypnotized her with sequences of touch. For minutes she was content to exist in that covenant, participating in the languid exchange because it was unfolding so delicately in front of her, but she grew impatient with him. She pushed harder, she kissed deeper, she thought at him in bold italics, and all she got in return was an enveloping push back that set her upright and disconnected them at nearly every point of contact. Come on, Peter.

She straddled his hips, staring at him while he held her a foot away. He had the strangest expression on his face. Sad and happy together. She didn't know what he was waiting for.

"I'm not going to do what you want me to do," he said, that sad smile never dropping. The confidence she'd gained since he'd kissed her melted right away. God damn it, she thought. He was still holding her with the thing she couldn't see; it was wrapped around her like a sling. He was smart enough not to use his hands. She didn't bother saying let go.

"You don't really want that," he said, and it sounded like he was pleading. She was glaring at the bedspread. He had five seconds before she'd set it on fire. Let's see what he'd think she wanted then.

"Peter," she growled. She could feel the hair on her arms rising. She let the anger radiate from her like a solar flare, and she saw him flinch.

Suddenly, she felt penetratingly calm. She looked at Peter, hurt and surprised. He wouldn't. But he was. The calm was spreading through her and there was nothing she could do. "Don't you do this," she said, almost helplessly mellow. She searched desperately for her rage, the rage he was replacing with a calm she didn't want to feel, but it was just gone. She sat on his lap, watching him neutrally. "Fuck you, Peter," she said, and it sounded like passing conversation. He felt bad for robbing her of what really was righteous anger, but it was just easier to put out little fires than big ones. Metaphorically and literally.

"I'm sorry," he said, and he did look remorseful, "but I know you, and I know I've got one time that you're ever going to try this."

Olivia hung her head. Try this. Like it was some cheap ploy. She'd assumed this would be much easier. Hadn't he said he loved her?

"And sweetheart, this is not gonna be how it goes." He ducked his own head, trying to pull her gaze up from the abyss. "You can't have the memory before the real thing. It doesn't work that way," he said. He was...something unfamiliar. Something that didn't sound right on him. Afraid. Whatever. She was doing her best to block out his voice but she jumped when his hand touched her cheek, his palm across her face in a breathtakingly gentle hold. He didn't try to move her, just let the warmth work into her skin where she was cold with disappointment.

She wished he wouldn't touch her like that for the same reason she wanted this thing he wouldn't give her.

They didn't have to touch. At least, not so much. He'd shown her that much in their dream. It was as safe a solution as she would ever be able to come up with: it would be so easy to compartmentalize something that would only ever exist in her head. It might take some effort for him, but he loved a goddamn challenge. All he had to do was send the thoughts her way and then it could be over and done until the next time. And there didn'thave to be a next time; that was the beauty of the thing. It could be fun and exciting and it could feel fantastic and then they could go back to how things were.

But she would not be able to deny her body, if they went the other way. Her body didn't lie, didn't forget. It still felt every blow her father had ever laid upon her. It felt the emptiness of loss and regret and mistakes. It would feel his glimmer, and it would remind her every day that he could be gone in a second. She would go to their shared bed with an existential fear, a fear proportionate to how good it would feel to be with him. She shuddered to think, really shuddered, and he leaned forward to hold her again.

"Don't be scared," he whispered. She was trying, and at the same time denying she felt fear at all.

"You don't know what I want," she said bitterly, the comment weak and out of place. It didn't even make sense; he knew her verbatim. His arms tightened reflexively around her, so much that for a moment she lost her breath.

"You think that's true?" he asked, though it was clear to him she didn't really. She gave no answer. He didn't know why this was so hard. It could be so easy, so good, but she always had to fight.

She sighed into his neck. She didn't say anything for a long time.

"You can change my mind," she whispered finally, and he knew she meant it literally. He could make her unafraid. He could make her see past the risks. She didn't pull away to see his face. She didn't want to see him disagreeing with her like she knew he would, on principle. He shook his head gently against her neck.

"No," he said. He didn't bother to elaborate. In the end she'd be willing or she wouldn't, and the decision would be hers and not because he sucked the fear out of her. Anger was one thing; useless, pointless, antagonistic. But she got to be afraid, like everyone else. He wondered if she has been so resistant with John. Of course not. She wasn't living with John. More importantly, John wasn't already holding a piece of her soul in his hand when he got around to kissing her for the first time.

"Peter, come on," she said.

"The things you risk every day," Peter said suddenly, "are so much more important than this. Your life. My life. But you risk it! Why not now?"

Her lip curled angrily. He was getting there, too; his face was darker with every passing minute.

"You come in here and you want me to do this thing, you want me to mess around in your head but you're afraid that I'll touch you," he growled. "Think of how that might feel to me."

She stayed mute.

"What indication have I not given you? What point have I not yielded?" He rubbed the back of his neck. "'Livia," he said quietly. He had no idea what else to tell her. He began to think that he'd been wrong, that she was nowhere near wanting him like he wanted her. He was wrong. She wanted him more than he'd imagined.

"You said we had a 'family unit,' here," she said. "My family was violent. My family splintered."

"It doesn't have to be that way."

"No," she stopped him. "You're not understanding." Peter was confused. There weren't many things in the world he didn't understand. "My family was dysfunctional, sure," she said, "but my father never fails with that card on my birthday."

"Then--"

"Family is good," she said. "The more fucked-up we are, the more fucked-up things we see, the stronger we'll be."

Peter looked disdainfully at the ceiling. "Yeah, I guess that's one completely twisted way to look at something good."

"I want to be your family. You don't sleep with your family. If you sleep with me, then what am I?"

Peter looked at her, biting his lip tiredly. He almost said too much goddamn work, but he didn't because despite his frustration, he almost knew how she felt. He'd spent years, decades, running from his father, only to feel just as responsible and bound when he saw him again. Those bonds would never break, no matter how hard he tried to erode them. Sometimes he felt they'd only grown stronger in his absence. He could never leave his family, not really. But women? He'd been on the run with several, and he could remember maybe half of their names on a good day. Olivia was different, but she had no way to know that. Unless he told her.

"There are different kinds of families," Peter said.

"Yeah," she said, head downturned.

"We have a good one," he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. She glanced up, her gaze wavering. The conversation had become so strange and surreal that it was almost too easy to say honest things.

"But it's yours," she whispered. "Yours and Walter's." She blinked. "You include me. Which is nice. But."

"No," he said, "that's not..." He squeezed the hand on her shoulder as he shut his eyes to think. Olivia waited. He opened his eyes, licked his lips. "Sweetheart," he said. "You've got this thing wrong. You're not 'included.' You just are." His hand dropped from her shoulder to gently touch the long stripes of hair that fell around her face. "You're not a colleague or a piece of lab equipment. I mean, even if you were, you've seen how attached Walter gets to his lab equipment." That made her smile. "But you're us," he emphasized. "It's not our choice to take you or leave you; it's your choice to stay or go."

Olivia put her fingers up to touch Peter's through her hair. He clasped her hand in his and brought it down to his lap.

"If we do this, and it goes bad--and I don't think it will--then it'll be messy and ugly but we're still going to be family. And we can be ugly all we want, and if we stop speaking to each other we'll be like the two unfriendly aunts at the family reunion," he said. "Is this reassuring you or am I making it worse?"

She was smiling. "Honestly, I'm not sure," she said, but he was leaning forward to kiss her and she was leaning forward too.

"And I'm not sure what the definition of 'overachiever' becomes in the Bishop household, but I'm pretty sure you've earned that title," he said just before he touched her lips. She laughed quietly against his mouth, and the vibrations brought him right back to the place where he was hungry for her, the place he'd been when she'd come into the room in the first place. His hands flattened tightly around her back and he kissed her fiercely.