TITLE: The White Oak
CHARACTERS: Peter Bishop, Olivia Dunham
GENRE: Dark
RATING: M
SUMMARY: "Anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed."—Robert H. Schuller
SPOILERS: Season One pilot
AUTHOR'S NOTE: A story that has wanted to be written since October 2008 and fondly finished two years later
DISCLAIMER: unbeta'd
Olivia sits at one of the desks, eating the peanut butter and apricot jam sandwich she had bought from home. It's warm and uncomfortable to eat, sticking to the entirety of her mouth, challenging to swallow. Not that all food isn't become hard to palette anymore—flavour seems lost and the textures don't feel right. She isn't sure if this is because John's senses have become jumbled and disoriented with hers or if she's simply in mourning.
Movement brings Olivia out of her thoughts and she looks up to see Peter Bishop pulling out the chair across the desk from hers. He's balancing a cup of coffee atop his sandwich box; he shares a shy smile with her and although she doesn't smile back immediately, she makes sure to do so the second time he looks in her direction. He talks with her about random things and she can tell that he's only trying to fill the emptiness with words. She herself has never been good with words and she longs to explain to him that she is past words now, that she can survive without them, though she respects the gesture.
He seems lost, someone without a cause or a purpose...
It hurts her to see him like this. Peter seems hesitant, but he complies with her request, spitting on her face, hissing how worthless she is. Sleeping with a traitor? Filth. Cortexiphan freak. She doesn't deserve love, ever. He whispers the words with such hatred she wonders if deep down he believes them. He must. How could he not?
"Are you listening to me?" he growls gripping her jaw tightly with his fingers, forcing her to look at him.
He flickers, the gold and glimmer wafting off his naked body like steam off pavement, small curls and waves that float away, but in the green of his eyes, she can see tears. He isn't someone who likes this—she doesn't like it either, but that's the only way it feels right, the only way John ever made her feel right. She lies completely still beneath him, his hot saliva running down her cheekbone.
"Just hate me like you hate your father," she'd told him.
Of course asking Peter to hate Walter was like asking a fish to swim, it comes so naturally to him and
His hand angrily strikes her—he isn't skilled enough yet to make her cry. This sex, their special secret, is a reminder of how numb she is to the world around her. She hasn't felt in years, but John knew her, the dark little tidbits in her that he could make surface to make her hurt. His words had been like hot daggers in the ice of her body, but this is Peter now and Peter is not John. And she's thankful for that. But sex is nothing without pain, humiliation, without suffering.
When he finally finishes, Peter sobs against her neck; she knows he's never treated a woman like this before and it's obvious that he's never thought he was capable of it. Her fingers mindlessly trace secret symbols across the nape of his neck, feeling his tears washing her skin. She knows it's water not holy enough to clean away her sins.
Maybe one day she will be able to save Peter, teach him how to neither want nor feel, show him how to cut away the emotions that tie him to this world. He could be like her, empty, numb. She could complete him. Olivia will always belong to John, but she believes that she could love this Bishop.
But for now, she will simply chill him with the frost.
