A/N: Hey all, I'm back from my vacation and writing furiously to catch Within up to The Waiting Room so that we can get on with the action! Thank you all for your wonderful reviews!
This chapter corresponds to CH 10 of The Waiting Room. :)
She woke to the scrutiny of his steady blue gaze, his profile lit by a sideways slant of dying light through the window blinds. Considering the way her night had gone—restless even by Fringe standards—a day of sleep had left her feeling much improved, though, unmedicated, she was experiencing an impressive degree of pain from her leg. But she wasn't about to let that show, not after pulling yet another near-death stunt and scaring the dickens out of everyone. Especially in light of the whole Peter/Over There debacle, she figured everyone had had enough stress to cope with in the past month.
Peter watched as she yawned and stretched. When he told her that everyone else had gone to watch a movie across the hall, he tried not to smile as he said it, but there was a tell-tale lift to his eyebrows and the corner of his mouth that Olivia recognized. They're giving us time to ourselves. She felt a little guilty for missing the movie with Rachael and Ella, but the guilt was easily submerged beneath the thrill of anticipation at finding herself alone with Peter.
He fussed over her, in his subtle, Peter-ish way. Put food together, let her pick her favorite movie, brought her a root beer. Made her take some pain medication. He was playing it casual—and he was very, very good at it—but she knew him and underneath she could tell he was worried about her. This both endeared him to her and annoyed her in no small portions.
When the pizza was ready, he brought her a plate and then surprised her by sitting down beside her on the sofa, tucking her legs gently into his lap, one palm resting warmly on her shin. She found herself picking at her pizza as she watched Peter out of the corner of her eye, feeling edgy and foolish and a little nervous, too, which didn't make much sense, considering she and Peter had hardly been out of each others' sight since she'd managed to cross back over. He's slept in my bed, for Pete's sake. She smiled slightly at the silly pun, unable to help herself, fluttery with nerves and fuzzy from the pain medication. I feel… carbonated, she thought, oddly. Overall, it was a strange mix, and she stayed quiet, content to let her mind drift, tethered to the couch by the casual physical contact of her legs in his lap.
Even underneath her sheepishness and the cloudiness of the medication, she couldn't ignore that her prevailing—overwhelming—emotion had grown from that little thrill to a full-blown undercurrent of momentum, impetus, anticipation. She felt poised on the edge of something important. The last time she'd felt this way was the evening when she'd discovered Peter's glimmer after Jacksonville. And it was there, this night, too—faintly. Every once in a while she'd see the weird shift of light out of the corner of her eye as if to underscore everything that had happened since then.
Knocking the root beer over had been a genuine accident and she'd cursed herself for her klutziness, feeling silly and self-conscious as Peter had to fetch a dishtowel to clean up after her. He knelt in front of her to sop up the mess, and they bumped heads as they looked down at it together. Olivia raised her head and met his gaze, taking a shallow breath as her stomach fluttered with nervous butterflies and Peter stared back at her, brows knit, intense as only Peter could be. He dropped the towel, freeing his left hand to stroke her cheek, and she tried not to shiver visibly at his touch as her heart thumped audibly in her chest. She watched his gaze flicker down to her mouth, and back again. "'Livia—" He whispered, and she did shiver then, awash in a wave of goosebumps as her name curled in syllables from his tongue.
The root beer soaked into the couch, abandoned as they recognized that this was what they wanted—that from the moment she'd woken to his patient, affectionate gaze, the trajectory of the evening had been fixed to deposit them here. She wanted to reach up and touch him, but she felt frozen, pinioned in place by nerves as his glimmer shifted in the periphery and raised a sudden, chilly awareness of the terrible evanescence of time—of almost everyone she'd ever cared about in her life. She'd made a space for Peter in her world, and now, with an awful premonition, she could see the entire arc—the inevitable eventuality of that space, horribly empty. Physics is a bitch.
Peter, for his part, watched her brief panic and continued to meet her eyes, unflinching.
But she—they—had already made the decision. Her words bound them, hanging in the air, wrapping them in another eventuality. You belong with me.
Just as before, she hesitated, needing him but unsure how to proceed. "Peter, I—I don't know how to do this," she uttered, a plea. Little shocks of electricity ran up and down her limbs, and shortened her already shallow breath. He leaned in closer, and she held her breath as he whispered, "Don't worry, 'Livia," inclining his head slightly to cover her lips with his own.
They had kissed exactly twice before, but each time there had always been something holding them back. This time was different. Her pulse rate crescendoed as her breathing became ragged, and both were accompanied by a surge in adrenaline so intense—soaking her already drugged brain—that later she would only remember these kisses in snippets and flashes: their lips and tongues moving together; the taste of him; her hand pressed against his chest as she counted his rapid heartbeats; his musky scent enveloping her, waking a primal need that had long lain dormant; the taut arc of his back muscles over her and his growl of pleasure as he carefully but urgently pressed her into the sofa cushions; the delicious and agonizing prickle of his stubble against the tender skin of her throat. She was surprised to find herself pressing into him with equal fervor, drawing him to her fiercely, rough and wanting. When his name dropped from her lips it was unbidden, emotional, raw with a need for him that was visceral, shuddering in her limbs: closer, tighter, more. Later she would remember one lucid thought: finally.
She hardly noticed when he accidentally pressed his knee into her wound—an accident—and felt vaguely irritated as a gasp of pain escaped her lips. Her irritation increased as he drew away from her, horror-stricken, looking severely chastened. She tried to pull him back to her but he shook his head. "No… no—I don't want to hurt you." Trying not to look as put-out as she felt, she exhaled forcefully. Who knew when they would get time alone like this again? As she shuddered with unspent need and a sudden flare of anger, she tried to focus on the sweetness of his reaction, and not the misplaced self-flagellation. He shuffled around, cleaned up the root beer as best he could—though by now most of it had worked its way into the couch stuffing for the long haul—and stood with his back to her, forcing himself to appear completely uninterested as she changed her sopping t-shirt.
Eventually he flopped down on the couch next to her, still wallowing in his stupid, unnecessary pout. She was still tempted to be angry as she looked over at him, sorely disappointed. After a moment, she made herself smile—a mixture of affection and annoyance. "Come on, Peter, I'm okay." The evening need not be a complete waste. His grudging capitulation was to put an arm around her shoulders, and she snuggled into it, ignoring his continuing gloom. I'll take what I can get.
When he kissed her hair, she sighed.