There was something intrusively aggressive about the way the red and blue lights hit Peter's cornea; an almost-epileptic pain thudded behind the bridge of his nose. Cop cars, so many fucking cop cars had crammed into this side street not wide enough to accommodate the calvary. All for a skinny lab assistant whose worst weapon was an STD-loaded syringe. It looked like the whole damned Las Vegas PD had heralded to this spot.

Nevada doesn't fuck around about its brothels, Peter thought with a painful sarcasm that had failed to do him many favors tonight.

The blinding cavalcade emergency lights, the mortifying struggle with a suspect half Peter's size, a sort-of sex hangover from an extremely satisfying but hopelessly convoluted erotic romp in a back room, and his blonde 15-minute lover in stripper garb saving his ass from death by venereally motivated weirdo and emanating vibes colder than the deepest part of the Arctic Ocean.

It was all so fucking nauseating.

Peter was biting back the bile bubble causing him this weird emotional heartburn. He hadn't spoken since the scuffle outside of the bar for fear he might puke on the detective's shoes, so he resorted to what he was sure were pathetic nods and head shakes to all the questions. He suspected the tire iron to his head may have something to with his current gastrointestinal calamity, maybe a concussion. But more than anything, the well-disguised panic set in Olivia's eyes every time they crossed his path was worse than the smell of a severed head boiled with cabbage, and given his current queasiness, Peter was desperately trying not to think of the situation that armed him for that analogy.

Peter was uncertain where her uneasiness was coming from. After they had, for lack of a better term, fucked like teenagers in the back room, Olivia's realization that the suspect that was very likely the party responsible for widespread death by genetically altered STD was sitting at a bar table while they indulged their impulses came hard and fast. He had rarely seen anyone dress so quickly, particularly into an article of clothing as complicated as that damned corset. She pulled the tiniest revolver Peter had ever seen from her stripper shorts and made a pursuit, and Peter quickly followed. The guy must have been prepared for a possible assault, because as soon as he saw Olivia with a gun trained at him, that motherfucker ran, knocking Olivia flat on her back. Peter pursued at a rapidity reserved for the most disgusting of perpetrators as his target headed for a back exit, tipping over waitresses and wasted cocktails on his way. Peter burst out into an empty alley, only to have the improvised weapon, probably found laying in the alley, crack against his skull. After all the assaults on his consciousness tonight, it was only appropriate that the suspect attacked its shell. Peter was really starting to hate all the irony.

Although it didn't knock him out, Peter's vision and motor skills were impeded by dripping blood and a shock reserved for severe blows to the head. Olivia, because she is too perfect for her own good, arrived just in time, tackling the skinny man before he could take another swing at Peter's head. The man got a few punches in against her, but stronger men have bent to the will of Olivia Dunham somehow or another. She body slammed him into the pavement, restrained him until an incoming cop could cuff him and gave him a bloody nose for good measure. Peter just had his ass saved by a girl.

His head felt like it had a crack the size of the equator. Olivia had a bloody forehead, but it made her look more brass-bounded than broken. She looked resolutely unbreakable, even as she mustered up a business tone despite the blood and fishnets she was wearing. He watched her morosely. He had always imagined that if they or he or she ever finally overcame whatever obstacles were keeping them apart, it would have cleared the relentlessly foggy atmosphere always hanging between them. Now it was so dense that Peter couldn't see a clear path. This limbic dance, this futile chess game they had been playing for the last year or two was finally at an impasse so complicated that Peter couldn't fathom the next move. Anytime one or the other got close, Olivia would throw up her walls or Peter would wiggle out into a path that was easier to walk until the next crossroads. But this, this was fucking atrocious in its complexity. In his own way, Peter had finally given up the control he so desperately needed to operate just to tear down a few bricks in her stupid walls. Instead, he seemed to reinforce them. There was no empathetic nod in his direction, no reassuring squeeze on his shoulder, not even a glance to acknowledge the steps they had taken together on this exhausting journey. It made him physically ill. Not that he needed the mollycoddling, but he thought a concussion sustained in the line of duty warranted at least a little sympathy. He finally admitted to himself how pathetic it was that he hoped he just kept missing her nervous and concerned glances in his direction. And he hated himself for craving it.

Peter finally turned away and found the most isolated curb he could find to sit and rub his bruised head and ego. He let his head fall into his hands, as he had too many times to count tonight, and rubbed his temples with his thumbs. Minutes, although he swear it felt like hours, later he felt a hand on his wrist. He didn't have to look up to know it was her. At this point, he was pretty sure he didn't want to.

"Peter," she said so softly, he wondered whether she was desperate not to be heard. He just grunted in response.

"Let me take you to the hospital," her voice was more firm, commanding, almost. He resisted with silence, his head still buried in his faithful hands.

"Peter, please," she said, still firmly but more gently. That and his penchant for snarky remarks was enough to pull his head up to meet her eyes. He tried not to soften at the sincere concern he found there.

"You know, this isn't exactly the situation I wanted to hear those words again," he tried to smile, but he meant it more than both of them anticipated. Olivia bit her lip, suppressing either a smile or a nervous resistance. Peter really wasn't sure which.

"Take what you can get?" she supplied with a lightness he knew she was struggling to maintain. He just shook his head and laughed as he stood.

"I guess that's how it's always going to be, huh?" he said, more bitterly than he realized, as he turned and headed for the SUV. He couldn't bring himself to see the effect his words had on her as he crawled into the passenger side, knowing that arguing wouldn't stop her from beating him into submission. He would either go to the hospital willingly, or they would argue and strain these delicate threads even more. And then they would go to the hospital. For the first time in his life, he just didn't have the strength or the energy to argue or fight it anymore. He pressed his head against the cool glass, and God it felt good. But not as good as releasing himself into Olivia as she screamed his name.

Shut up, Peter told his trauma-drunk id, just shut up.

Peter felt the infuriatingly blonde object of his hard-won affection slide into the driver's seat next to him. He closed his eyes, trying his damnedest to evade her pitying looks. In a silent fit of pride, he decided that if he had to win her attention by being mortally wounded, then he didn't fucking want it. He made a gamble by forfeiting his emotional control to her, and he had lost this hand. She didn't have to vocalize it, he could see her fear and apprehension boil up like Old-fucking-Faithful as she ran away from him in that back room. He was so angry at Olivia, so flustered by this cerebral tug-of-war, that he didn't notice that two minutes had past and the vehicle still hadn't budged. Tentative fingers wrapped around his wrist; he could feel her concern in the pressure on his pulse.

"Peter..."

Peter kept his head pressed against the window as he listened to the rest of her words die in her throat. When he didn't respond, he felt her fingers release him and the motor rumble to life. He might have blinked once in the time it took to get to the hospital. Or he might have dozed off. Either way, Olivia hadn't said a word since the SUV started. Although some part of his brain was screaming at him to engage her, to start again digging out the Olivia he was so drawn to buried under all that proverbial brick and mortar, the domineering pain pounding in his parietal lobe was taking precedence over any emotional impulse.

Peter hated the way cold, gloved hands felt against his bare chest. Olivia had wordlessly walked them up to the emergency room, but there was an obstinate pain still planted in her eyes. Peter's undying compassion for the woman, woebegone heart walls or not, tried to shove empathy in his gaze. He would try to vocalize it, but he might puke all over her heels. The extremely late hour, and likely the blood dripping from the gaping wound atop his skull, was enough to bypass any routine paperwork or treatment cues. Two nurses, seeing Olivia supporting him as he struggled to stay conscious, took him from her side and rushed him past the double doors of doom into urgent care.

Peter had never experienced this feeling before, almost like the concussion was spreading like an infection. He mustered enough strength to look back at Olivia, now covering her immodest clothing with a pea coat. The anguish on her face was excruciating. He tried to tell her that he, that they, would be ok with some rest and mutual cooperating to figure out this clusterfuck they created as the double doors closed before her small frame. But all he managed to do was vacate the curdled contents of his protesting stomach into a plastic bag held out by an older nurse on his right side. She was a fucking waste-receptable ninja, Peter mused to himself despite the hurling food particles falling into it from his mouth.

As every meal he had eaten over the last week spilled into a hospital equivalent of a Walmart bag, he felt the contrition and anger start to leave too. Or maybe it was the light feeling inflating in his chest pushing all the negativity out. Or maybe it was the cold floor on his face as he vomited himself into unconsciousness. He wasn't awake long enough to finagle the answer.

I hear beeping...

Beeping isn't good. Either Walter is feeding me hallucinogenic drugs via my waffles, or I'm dead and hell is nothing but a feral series of beeps that ring out all the sensibility in your head. God, I hope it's LSD. I can't take an eternity of mechanical bleating. I wonder if robots count mechanical sheep when they sleep... Maybe I'm in a robotic dream...

Peter felt himself moving, but there were no hands to support him, and his legs were certainly not working this magic. Full consciousness slammed against his closed eyelids as he finally remembered that he was in the hospital, that he likely had a concussion, and that the commotion around him was more than likely an MRI to check the swelling of his brain. He was surprisingly lucid, save for a fuzz crackling at the ends of his brain. He opened his eyes to a blindingly white room before being helped out of the machine and lead back to a room he didn't remember entering. A paper rustling when he moved and a familiar draft along his backside told him the nurses must have changed him into a hospital gown.

I hope you enjoyed the view.

After nestling into the uncomfortably crisp sheets on his bed, he heard the door nob crack through the silence of the room. Olivia, more nervous than he ever remembered seeing her, stepped into the room.

"Peter?"

"You thought it was someone else?" he tried to supplement his smartassery with a smile, but even his jaw hurt. He grimaced at him, probably a response to his own wincing.

"I talked to the doctor. He said after looking at your scan, the swelling is minimal. I can check you out whenever your ready to go," Olivia said, hardly holding eye contact with him. "He said you can go home as long as someone monitors you. We'll have to put off going home for at least a few more days."

"Bummer," he groaned, sitting up and looking around for his clothes. Looking up at her, he saw her surveying him with a furrowed brow and a furious assault from her teeth to her lips.

God, I wish she'd quit that...

"Peter..." she started in, taking a step forward but stopping in front of an invisible wall that accentuating her apprehension. Peter couldn't take it anymore. Hours ago, she was writhing on top of him, and now she could barely find words to comfort or calm or, hell, convey anything besides this latent fear that motivates everything about what she is. He didn't want to be a cause for it anymore. He just wanted her, calm and safe and his. Why it took fucking in a strip club and a tire iron to the head to realize this could only be a testament to Peter's sentient stupid regarding matters of the heart.

By the time she had finished the nervous dance on her toes, Peter was in front of her, around her, into her. He wrapped an arm around her waist as the other wound into her hair and held her head close to his own.

"Olivia," he said into her ear. A statement, clear and confident in its hidden message. I'm here. I'm right fucking here, you infuriating human being.

Olivia reciprocated by wrapping him up just as tightly in her own arms, and for a few minutes, they let each other be what they had always been. Partners. Friends. Loving and in love, in their own broken and flawed ways. With a steadying breath, Olivia let herself suck it all down. Peter felt an inexplicable pride for her, maybe because he thought, or hoped, she was finally willing climbing over those obstacles she put in the way of her core. Maybe she was breaking out to go to him instead of making him barge in to rescue her from something only she knew how to tame.

"I just need some time. And patience. And, god I don't know, love maybe, to settle into this," Olivia whisper to Peter's neck. "Despite every reason and rational thought telling me I need to run from this, to protect myself, I don't want to."

Instead of words, Peter just squeezed her a little tighter, his understanding slightly enhanced, but his message still resolutely the same.

I'm still right here.

A/N: I hope it hasn't been so long that the few people following this fic haven't completely given up on it. I am truly sorry for the delay. I do have a chapter or two more for this. And I hope this chapter isn't too disappointing. No smut, but hopefully moving in the right direction for a decent, but not-so-predictable ending.

For those that review, I am so grateful for the feedback. You are truly wonderful.
-Ari