Peter finds Olivia hiding out in her office, knocking once before letting himself in and closing the door behind him. He doesn't bother to wait for the formality of an invitation.
"Hey," he says quietly. The air in her office is thick; undisturbed.
He finds her on the futon that doubles as her little bed, sitting so still that she's almost lost in the backdrop of her surroundings. She's someplace far away, eyes unfocused, her chin resting against the curl of her fingers. Peter's voice finally draws her focus to look at him.
"What's up?" she asks through her fingers like she's just noticed him.
"I was about to ask you the same thing." Peter says casually, sweeping through her makeshift bedroom in hopes that a replacement blanket might present itself magically. He gives up with a sigh, stuffing his hands into his pockets and looks for a place to make himself less uncomfortable.
She shrugs, leaning back to perch her feet against the coffee table, reminding him of the traditional Olivia he remembers. He settles on occupying the space on the coffee table, sliding her feet gently out of the way to sit.
He doesn't come in much, and for some reason that makes him feel guilty but not a tad surprised. She's always preferred her privacy; he respects that. There aren't many places for them all to hide from each other living in the lab, even a dilapidated and enormous one at that. Her room is and has always been orderly and neat, exactly what he'd expect from a military brat and she never fails to impress. It looks like her old office save for the futon and the coffee table and a few picture frames they rescued from her apartment before things got really bad.
One's a fairly recent one of her and Ella, the other she's standing next to Rachel as young girls with matching braces grinning back at the camera. Olivia's smiles have the same identical uncomfortable pull of her lip and it makes Peter's chest tighten in a way that he wouldn't dare call endearment. He'd never thought much of the photos before, but they make him uncomfortable now, the little bites of uneasiness snaking up his skin.
"You want to talk about it?" He asks openly enough. His eyes shoot to the ceiling to avoid looking directly at her. He waits for the flat no without hope for much else.
"What is there to talk about?" she answers, slipping her feet under her and he knows her well enough to know when she's being evasive. Her face is blank but her eyes wary, her hair falling in lazy curves down her shoulders. Trying her best to ignore him.
He gives her his best you know exactly what look but her face remains perfectly impassive, reminding Peter never to play poker with her. That's how she's going to be. He tries out a new tactic.
"About what happened back in the bookstore." He says evenly, her eyes darting to look at him finally.
"How's your head?" she asks offhandedly and instinctually he raises a hand to his forehead, disturbing the blood crusted gash under the band-aid and he hisses.
"I just remembered it hurts like hell." He retorts as he shakes his hand away like it might help the burning over his eyebrow. Olivia greets him with a rolling of her eyes and lifts herself off the couch, retrieving the small black case and bottle of iodine from her desk drawer and settles back on the couch to unzip it, leaving the iodine next to Peter on the coffee table.
"Don't even try to get close to me with that," Peter points to the iodine with his chin, leaning away from her until she stops unzipping. He finally relaxes when she puts the little kit down next to her and leaves her hands open for him to see.
"Fine," she says lightly, hands unmoving. He gives her a suspicious look.
"Hey, I want to ask you something." She says innocently, leaning toward him like she's about to tell him a secret and he follows her without thinking, mimicking her exactly. His heart puckers a twinge.
Without warning and behind a sympathetic mask, her hand reaches out to his forehead and rips the band-aid completely off; taking the top layer of crusted skin with it.
Peter's yelp is louder than he intends, holding his flattened hand over the now bleeding wound, eyes stinging and feeling ridiculously stupid.
"Don't tell me you're still mad about 'three.'" He mutters darkly as she picks up the iodine after she pulls more gauze out of the little black pouch.
"Either you can let me clean it or I can let Walter." Her smile is sweet as she tells him threateningly and garners a mutinous scowl in return, but it works. His sigh is loud and dejected as he slumps his shoulders like a petulant teenager to show his displeasure at her blackmail. But he lets her scald him with the iodine without twitching. Much.
She's close to him, fingers tracing the path of the gash and he takes the opportunity to steal a peek at her shoulder. Her neck is blotchy red and inflamed in parts from the alley. She presses harder than she needs to and he bites back the invective he wants to snap. They sit on the seesaw of their silent standoff; Peter waiting to see which side tips.
"Do you believe him?" Olivia startles him with her gentle voice, her eyes focused on his forehead. The pressure of her fingers against his forehead falters for a moment. He breathes out as he decides.
"I think the bigger question is if you believe him," he returns, watching her face carefully as she drops the bloodied gauze next to him to dig out another band-aid. "I mean, we are talking about Walter here." He gauges to see what she really wants to hear.
She's stuck on the corners of paper lining the bandage, flicking one end with a thumb and forgetting to peel it apart. Peter's dead quiet and trying to match her breathing, afraid to think too hard about the logic of Walter's scribbles and have the conclusion play across his face.
"And if he's right? If they retain some memory?" her voice firm now, but she still won't look him in the face, angling to rest on the shell of his ear.
Peter moves purposely into her space, tasting her doubt and curling a single finger to redirect her gaze. Her eyes are a vivid green, filled with endless questions to which he has no answers.
"You think what I did was wrong." She says flatly, finding his eyes with doubt then and he's a little thrown-off by her uncertainty. Whatever words he'd used to describe her, uncertain was never one of them. He takes a few moments to choose his words, rolling them across his tongue to taste them out, but none of them seem to quantify the comfort he knows she's looking for.
"Will anything I say actually help?" He offers honesty. Her head nods as her eyes fall back to peeling the corners again, not able to separate the two sides. Peter's never been the most adept at offering solace, so he elects silence, opting instead to reach out to steady her hand, squeezing it briefly in his before reaching for the bandage and peeling the paper apart for her.
"If they retain fragments of memory, there must be a way to cure-" her voice is unsteady, leaning closer and speaking so softly that her breath is a light breeze against his cheeks, like she's afraid the others might hear them. The look on his face stops her short, reaching out to reclaim the bandage from Peter's fingers.
She reaches above him and settles the band-aid with a gentler touch and smoothes it flat against the skin. Her fingers linger in the threshold of his hairline and he has to resist the urge to push into her hand.
"It doesn't matter anyway. It's too late for him." She says and her hands come back up to smother her lips, pushing back her outburst. He knows where this is going, can see the endgame to her questions. He knows that she desperately wants to believe Walter's theory, and he knows the horrific ramifications if it does prove true. It's a terrible middle ground in which to be stuck.
"Do you think he remembered his wife?" she murmurs against her fingertips.
He's pretty sure she's not talking about the bookkeeper. Instead he sits in silence and looks to the photos that she's now gazing at with a heartbreaking expression splayed across her face. He knows she really wants to ask if he thought they'd remember her.
He doesn't answer. Can't answer. Won't answer. He's not sure which it is that keeps him from answering, but no words escape his mouth. He elects instead to squish in beside her on the couch, the medical aroma of the disinfectant a ripe contrast to the homey feeling he gets when he's close to her. He doesn't comfort her, not in the way she wants anyway, so he slides a hand across her back, looks away when he hears the sudden intake of breath and continues to run his hand along her back until the choking stops and she's finally silent.
He lets himself look at the pictures of her sister, the happiness framed in wood and glass and he feels an ache for Olivia's pain that he can't quite flavor. It's not his pain to endure.
"Sorry," she mumbles, swiping the back of her hand across one cheek, digging it into her eye. When she looks at him her face is serious but questioning, like she's noticing something different about him. He's uncomfortable under her muted expression and sits stone-still, hand frozen against her back. There's a charge to the air around them; playing lightly at the hair on his arms and he feels a sort of panic in his chest. The way she looks at him is fucking dangerous.
"Peter," she murmurs through red-rimmed eyes and flushed cheeks; he can't help but smile at the way her lips forms his name. His name. He swallows hard when she dips toward him, eyes dropping and her hand finding the side of his jaw. He stops breathing; choking on air and afraid that any move might be the wrong one, tipping them the wrong direction.
She seeks him out cautiously, her lips a light brush against his and he feels the panic spike; little pins pressing him hard from the inside out. His hand pulls her closer to him, the urge to touch her overwhelming.
There's a crash from outside in the lab and Peter nearly jumps straight out of his skin swallowing back his surprise with a startled cough. The sound outside is followed with a surprised shout from Walter and an exasperated chirp from Astrid and they catch the tail end of her barking "I am SO not cleaning that up."
Olivia's flushed face is hiding behind her hands and he can tell she's laughing by the way her shoulders vibrate. "Tell me he didn't knock over the head." She says through the gate of her hands.
"Better question should be who's going to clean whatever it is up." Peter strains his neck over her like he might see through the wall and into whatever Walter just destroyed. He feels absurdly off-kilter; fire red in the face and like there's too little air in the place that makes him dizzy.
He pushes back the hair from her shoulder, running a thumb over her neck as she gives him the same penetrating look that makes him feel like he's got his emotions written brightly across his face.
"Your head," she motions, running a spare finger across her mouth to hide her smirk but he doesn't bother to hide his. A quick check reveals that his gash has already bled through the first layer of plastic.
She pulls apart another band-aid and he sits still enough to let her put it on over the first. He doesn't even feel the pain anymore, just the dull thudding as a reminder.
"All better." She tries lightly, but her voice is still a bit too off to make it sound convincing. Peter gives her a tight smile, rising up so he can inspect the damage Walter's caused outside the room. He can't even get a 'thanks' out for her effort. He's too untrusting of his voice for that.
"Walter wants us to catch one. A live one." he says as he grips the doorknob, talking into the wood frame. He doesn't look back to catch the indignant face he imagines. The air's silent again with whatever she doesn't say. Finally, she answers simply:
"Then we'll catch one."
He does look at her then, a half smile that never reaches his eyes.
"You could come back," she says as an afterthought, like she doesn't mean it out loud. "You could come back tonight."
His brow furrows, squashing down his surprise. Waiting for the "but" he's expecting to follow.
"I know what you were looking for," she arches an eyebrow, letting him know he's not the only one who can be observant. "And being that you're not going to find an extra set of linens in here, you can just save yourself the misery of shacking up with Walter and come back tonight."
After a thought he lets the grin creep its way back into his features.
"Okay," he says as he opens the door, "okay."
And he clicksthe door shut behind him, not even caring what it is that Walter has done.