The dry chill that chapped her skin outside seemed to have taken the lab by a chokehold. It made her think of the ruefully familiar morgues surrounding the city, places she'd been a time or two. It was a cruel mirror to the cold thoughts that coated her consciousness, and she found herself craving to be consumed in a sun flare. An odd thought considering she had never been one for hyperbole.
Peter shuffled in with a jubilant Walter in his wake and a to-go coffee in a gloved vice grip. It wasn't long before he found her gaze from across lab, raising his eyebrows and supplying a lopsided smile that she returned.
It wasn't physical warmth, but right then, it was good enough.
It had been three weeks since Peter woke up in the hospital, and this was his first day back in the lab. This, she lamented, was as close as Olivia could get to normal. It had been several days since she had a decent excuse to drop by the Bishop residence.
"How're you holdin' up?"
"Not bad. Walter's been overseeing my rehabilitation, which as you can imagine, is going swimmingly."
Olivia barely had time to let out an appreciative chuckle before Walter snaked up behind Peter, smiling maniacally with the air of a man who had emerged victorious after going round and round with a vending machine.
"Olivia, he is recovering magnificently. After a traumatic brain injury, the brain has to make new pathways around the damaged neurons. Recovery can take months or years. But this boy, my son," Walter said, ruffling Peter's hair, "is a neural trailblazer."
"Walter, I finished the Sudoku puzzle in the Sunday edition of the Herald."
"In three minutes!"
Walter shuffled away and Peter turned back to Olivia with a pointed look and she bit her lip to quell the laugh.
"So really, how're you doing?"
"Some short term memory loss, still having trouble writing, but I'm surviving."
"Well, for your first day back, you have two choices. I have to finish up some interviews for the goo bomb case, or you can poke around a box of innards with Walter here."
They both turned to Walter as he disappeared behind a mound of file boxes as Astrid wandered into the lab.
"Astro, I can't find my experiment logs. I had a brilliant organization system, perfect for recall, but I seem to have forgotten the structure," Walter stared at the pile menacingly for several seconds. "Chronology is a beast of a thing."
Peter turned decisively.
"I'll get the notebook."
They swept into the lab a few hours later, carrying hot coffee and sandwiches from Walter's favorite deli.
"Is it salami?"
Walter appeared, his hair oddly dishevelled on one side and a manic intensity on his face.
"Yeah, Walter. Toasted with provolone. Your favorite."
Walter seized the sandwich and returned to a beaker of what looked suspiciously like curdled stomach contacts. Peter fished in the bag for Astrid's meal.
"Astrid, we got your-um..."
"Turkey and swiss on rye?"
"Yeah, that."
"Thanks. I'm going to eat over here, away from the half-digested hot dog."
After lunch, Peter settled onto a stool in the lab, looking over notes from the interviews earlier that morning. It had finally warmed up enough in the old building to shed coats and gloves. Olivia sipped her coffee as she thumbed through the case file when Peter dropped his pen and started flexing his hand.
"You OK, Peter?"
"Yeah, yeah. Fine," Peter feigned as he picked up the pen and started writing on a fresh page. Olivia's eyes lingered on him before returning to the file. Silence settled between them as Astrid ran diagnostics for Walter as he sung show tunes. It was a plastic thud against the cinderblock wall that made her look up again. She saw the pen Peter had thrown across the room rolling lamely as Peter's head sunk into his hands, increasingly erratic handwriting on the page cluing her into what had frustrated him.
She wordlessly got up to retrieve the pen. As she bent to pick it up, she a gentle hand on her shoulder, a jittering touch that could only belong to the resident genius/lunatic. She turned to Walter to find him smiling sadly at her.
Let me.
Walter picked up the pen before shuffling bashfully to his son, putting a hand on his shoulder as he offered it to him. Peter looked up at him seriously before nodding and taking the pen and resuming his notes. Olivia felt an odd pang of envy, but somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she knew it was only right to let Walter care for the son he had failed so many years ago.
"I have to go take some of these files to Broyles. Call me if you guys find anything," she announces before turning on her heel and heading to the Federal plaza.
It was another few hours before she returns to the familiar damp must of the Kresge building. The sound of piano notes rose and fell in the hallway as she let it coat her and fill her up. The melody was slow, not the lazy jazz tune she remembers. It is labored but diligent, and it promised progress. She opened the door noiselessly and stopped in the threshold, a simple voyeur to the evidence of his recovery.
You're getting there, she smiled as her eyes slipped closed.
The song came to an abrupt end with a dissonant clang and a heavy sigh. She opened her eyes and looked at him as the sour notes faded, his elbows on the keys and his head buried deep in his palms. They were alone in the lab, Astrid gifting Peter with reprieve from running Walter on some of his more pointless errands. But now, Olivia knew, he was cursing his hands for being unable to keep up with the easy melodies in his head.
She found herself sliding onto the bench and reaching for him, tilting her head towards his and running a hand across his shoulder and down his back in solidarity and comfort.
"Hey," she smiled faintly as he peaked over the cradle of his hands.
"What can I do?"
"Nothin', Liv. You're doing just fine."
She smiled as she began to play a few scales on the keys, making sure to hit each one with slow force.
"Walter was going on and on about how much progress you've made yesterday. 'A full recovery from sheer Bishop stamina,' and then he mumbled something about 'supplements' he may or may not have put in your food."
He laughed and she felt her heart lurch.
"It doesn't feel like a full recovery."
As he began to mimic her fingerings, his leg pressed against hers as he leaned over the keys. Every cell was aware of his proximity, and the familiar cocktail of nerves and thrill grappled in her chest. The seconds felt heavy as they pass before she decided it feels more right than wrong. It was something like an epiphany as when she wondered how she was ever afraid of him.
"Peter, if it were anyone else, I'd call it miraculous."
She could feel his eyes press into her, although she had not braced herself enough to meet him yet. So she kept scaling the keys as she heard his hand fall back in his lap.
"This used to be so easy," he said, indicating the piano with his hands.
She finally lifted her eyes towards him and he was staring at the keys with a forlorn defeat.
She reached for his face, smoothing his furrowed brow with her thumb, almost trying to erase the frustration that put it there.
"Stop," she said, almost demanding. He fixes her with a levelled stare, surveying and measuring. She didn't have the words yet.
"I should probably suck it up. I guess it doesn't matter in a cosmic sense."
"It does matter," she pushed, and his eyes were on hers again. "It matters to me."
He was silent and the answer she has finally summoned burned up her nerve endings as he stared and stared.
Here it is. This is your answer.
He brought his hands up to cup her face and she knew this was the moment she had been running from. He tilted his head and she squeezed her eyes shut before their lips finally meet. His were chapped but warm and weirdly perfect.
It was a short, tender kiss followed by several more before he pulled her close and really drunk her in. She hooked her fingers on his wrists as he moved against her, pulling her in as she relished how he felt against her. One of his dropped to her back as he pressed her against his solid torso. She buried one hand in the fabric of his cotton shirt as she purposely lost the other in his thick, soft hair, suddenly desperate to show him that she wanted this as much as he did.
He pushed and pulled, kneaded and squeezed, and she couldn't remember why she ever feared this.
When he broke away, his eyes remained closed for several eternal seconds, his hands still surrounding her. When he opened them, it seems like he was still searching for something.
"Liv?"
She pressed her temple to his, hands still flush against him.
"I'm right here."