Charlie, Astrid, and Broyles all told her she looked like she'd been in the sun when she got back. Rachel said, "How many times did you get laid?"
"He almost talked me into staying," Olivia said, unpacking her bag.
"So not only lots of sex, but very good sex," Rachel said. "Is that new underwear?"
"It's a new swimsuit," Olivia said.
"You bought yourself a pretty bikini," Rachel said.
"He bought it," Olivia said.
"Did you wear it for very long? Please, I need to know one of us actually has a decent sex life." Rachel grinned and twirled the bikini bottom on her finger.
"I did have," Olivia said. "He's not coming back here and I have no idea when I will be able to go back there."
She called him, though, that Friday. She told him about finding Nicholas Boone and having to kill his wife when he and Walter couldn't find the cure in time. "I thought, just once, we could save someone, you know?"
He took a deep breath. She said, "Are you smoking?"
"Right now? Yes," he said. "It's 6 am here, you just woke me up. I'm not complaining, I very much enjoy hearing from you but I don't feel like walking to the kitchen to get my medication. And, Olivia, you did try. You tried."
She kept calling him. It occurred to her that these were the conversations they used to have after a case, or driving somewhere back when he was almost her partner.
She went out in the field with Charlie and Astrid and she went back to Walter's lab and watched Walter work very hard to be focused. He was always sad. She thought about how much Peter hated him every time she saw him.
Charlie said, "Are you calling your long-distance boyfriend?"
"If you mean Peter, yes, I was going to call him," she said. "You just called Sonia."
"It's a long drive from New York City to Boston, and we do it all the time," he said.
"We do," Olivia said. Peter picked up and she said, "Hey, how are you?" It felt weird, though, talking to him with Charlie in the car as well. She only spoke to him for a few minutes.
Charlie said, "You two talk a lot."
"We do," she said.
"Do you think he'll ever come back?"
"To the US? Maybe. To working for the FBI or with his father? Not likely," she said.
"He was helpful," Charlie said.
She started calling him on an almost regular schedule. Right before she went to bed, or after she woke up. "I can hear you flinch through the line every time I mention Walter," she said, one night.
"I am not a fan of his, very true," Peter said. "But I like to hear about your day. So feel free to keep talking about him or whatever you want. I appreciate that you feel comfortable talking to me."
"If you keep talking like that, I won't keep calling," she said.
Peter said to her one night, "You know you deserve better than me. You should have someone there when you get home, making your dinner, pouring wine or something stronger."
"I should date a 50s housewife? I'm not really turned on by Donna Reed," she said.
"Really? She is very attractive. But yes, you deserve someone to take care of you, not just listen to you on the phone."
"You'd be bored," she said.
"Not in the slightest. I've discovered how much I enjoy inactivity, reading a good book. But I'm here and also not that much of a catch with the brain damage."
"You could be here," she said. "Move to New York City, work your very legal jobs, make me dinner when I'm there which would practically be three nights a week." She started to love the idea as she said it but she didn't think Peter would.
"You make it sound very tempting. Though I really like having an entire ocean between me and Walter and Nina," he said. He sounded like he was almost considering it.
"You don't have to see them. Walter, Nina, Broyles, they've all known you were in Lagos for the last month and none of them have bothered you, right?"
"I don't think it would last if I were closer," he said.
"Okay," she said. "It wasn't my greatest idea."
She missed him. They'd stopped Jones and begun to dismantle some of ZFT but every day there were new threats. William Bell had told Nina that Walter on the other side was the Secretary of Defense, and a harder, frightening man. Walter said they used to call him Walternate. They hunted for shapeshifters and tried to figure out what the Secretary was after.
It couldn't just be Peter, she thought. They could have gotten Peter at any time, assuming they had a way to get back to their side. She didn't trust William Bell at all. She didn't trust Nina.
Charlie, Astrid, Broyles, even Walter, they were the ones she believed with no agenda. Everyone else she had to figure out.
She trusted Peter completely.
She hung up with Peter on a Saturday morning and saw from her phone they'd talked for two hours. They had scheduled another call in 10 hours, they were both going to watch ET at the same time. "I am almost positive the ending is completely different on the other side," Peter had said. She looked at her call logs. She has talked to Peter every day for at least 30 minutes. She didn't even remember what they'd talked about at least three of those times.
She wanted to call him back and point that out to him. She shook her head and reached for a case file. Somewhere she was going to find an answer, she was going to figure out what Bell and Nina and the other Walter were playing at.
Walter said to her, "Maybe, maybe, you were able to cross over before."
Olivia could hear how Peter would have yelled at her. But he was in Nigeria. Olivia said, "What do you want to do, Walter?"
It wasn't the tank, at least. Or not the way she'd been in the tank when John was in her head. Walter said, "You already had cortexiphan again when we were in Jacksonville, and I don't think we'd want to do that again. Though maybe."
They started small. She stared at things and tried to make them move. Walter kept talking about perception and emotions. She missed Peter explaining or at least commenting sarcastically on Walter's speeches.
Walter showed her a video of a woman he'd given an obscene amount of drugs who talked about soldiers from the other side. The shapeshifters. Walter thought with work, maybe Olivia would be able to see them.
"So you want me to make things move with my mind and turn off lights and also be able to see if people or things are from the other side. That seems simple," Olivia said. Astrid smiled, at least.
Mostly, it was just exhausting. She felt the weight of expectations and her own inability to do the things he wanted.
Her first small successes were always right after she'd talked to Peter. After talking to him, she once managed to shut down all the lights in the lab. Another time, she saw a glimmer on a coin Walter had in his bedroom. Astrid brought it up to her, but Olivia suspected Walter had noticed first and sent Astrid as his emissary.
x
When Peter called Olivia, she was actually still in New York City. "I just got out of Massive Dynamic," she said. "Another new phone?"
"Yes, another new phone. I ditched both of the Bethel ones. New name, new phones, new city…"
"You moved," she said. He couldn't quite gage her tone. Hopeful, depressed?
"I did, indeed. I'm in Brooklyn," he said.
"Please don't say you're kidding," she said. And that tone was joy, he was sure.
"Not kidding. Come over now," he said. He gave her the address. He heard her mapping it out on the GPS. "I'll wait for you outside."
She got out of the SUV looking drained and exhausted. He could see the fading bruise on her forehead. She was smiling, though. She sat down next to him and kissed him. She kissed him and he didn't feel overwhelmed. Not until she pulled away and then he wanted to vomit. He didn't. He smiled back at her. "It's really nice to see you," he said.
"Why did you move here? When did you move here? I talked to you yesterday," she said. She leaned against him, making no move to stand up.
"I made up my mind to do it when Charlie called me on your phone to tell me you were in the hospital," he said. He'd started packing while Charlie explained what had happened.
"Last week," she said. "Last week, really?"
"You were shot," he said.
"I was only there overnight," Olivia said. "It was nothing."
"Also, according to Charlie, you were worn down to the bone because you and Walter have been spending a lot of time trying to work and refine your cortexiphan abilities."
"You and Charlie talked for a while," she said. She was still leaning into him despite the almost anger in her voice.
"We did," he said. He took out the cigarette he'd palmed as he left the apartment and lit it. Olivia scrunched up her face but still didn't move. Peter said, "I know I can't stop you doing reckless and dangerous things, but it turns out I really can't stand it when you do reckless and dangerous things and I'm so far away from you."
She snuggled closer. "So," he said. "I moved here, rented this place, and now you're up to speed."
"Did you already tell Charlie?"
"I told no one. Just you," Peter said.
He finished his cigarette and led her inside. Just like back in Lagos, she basically went to sleep.
When he woke up, she was on her side, looking at him.
He got up and took his medication and started coffee. Then he got back in the bed next to her. She said, "I missed you."
"I missed you, too," he said. "So tell me about whatever fucked up thing Walter has you doing."
"We could have sex instead," she said.
"Then we talk after," he said. She nodded.
She pushed the covers away and got on top of him, already reaching for his dick. He said, "I forgot to buy condoms, fuck."
"I am on the pill," she said smiling down at him. "Do you have any STDs?"
"Nope," he said. "Ah, nope." Olivia Dunham was a remarkable, wonderful skilled woman who was absolutely fantastic at giving handjobs. He flinched for a split second against the rush of memories, but it passed quickly. "Hey, hey, how about you?"
"No STDs either," she said.
"Good talk," he said. She let go of his dick and he actually whimpered. Then she shifted to sitting up and lowered herself onto him. "You really missed me," he said. He thrust up and up, squeezing her hips to pull her down. He watched her touching herself while he fucked her and he wished it could go on forever. She came loudly, tight on his dick and watching her, feeling it, was enough for him to come, too.
"I really missed you," she said. "We should get cleaned up."
One shower later they were back on the bed. He didn't bother getting dressed and neither did she. It was shaping up to be the best morning he'd had in a while. "You do not make great coffee," Olivia said.
"It's a coffee machine, I put the grounds in, I press brew," he said.
She shrugged. He said, "And back to Walter, please."
"It's nothing, Peter. It's staring at machines and concentrating -"
"And drugs, I assume, and floating in a tank that could kill you," he said. He knew his father.
"Yes," she said. "Not the tank, though, he won't put me back in there. Well, not with the same sensors and things. He uses it as a sensory deprivation tank, that's all. But there are drugs, his usual hallucinogens. It's not that bad. It's no more tiring than a really shitty case." Olivia stretched, a sight that went straight to his dick. "See, one good night's sleep and I'm back to normal."
"Is any of it working? Why is this incumbent on you - Nina and Bell know more than they're telling, they have to have a link to the other side," Peter said.
"I don't think we're going to get more out of Nina," Olivia said. "She always insists she's told us everything she knows, right before we find out more things she's lied to us about. And yes, it's working. I can see objects from the other side, I have made objects float in the air, and last week, I went to the other side for a few seconds -"
"Seriously?" She was always so amazing.
"Yes," Olivia said. She looked at him, contemplating. "Don't you want to go to the other side? Back where you said you belonged?"
It was his turn to shrug. "I genuinely don't know, Olivia. I don't know. So, no, I don't know if I want to go home. It's been 23 years. What am I gonna do, ride in a zeppelin, get a job working for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and, again, those are just a few things that were so different. The history I learned reading in my sick bed was different from the history I learned in 5th grade."
"How old were you in the 5th grade?"
"8," he said. "They stopped skipping me forward after that. On the other side, I never went to school but I am honestly not sure if Walter's son ever did before he died."
"You were sick for a long time," Olivia said. "Both of you, I guess."
"When I was five, my father arranged for me to see Return of the Jedi at a special screening at George Lucas's ranch. My father had designed an actual Star Wars system," he said. "I was sitting on my mother's lap and I knew I was so sick I was going to die. Because that's how you get special screenings and Carrie Fisher passing you candy."
Olivia said, "Carrie Fisher was there? Also, maybe you got to go the screening because of your father, not because you were sick."
She laid back down next to him. He looked over at her and said, "No, every version of Walter I've known was prone to working over parenting. I mean, my actual father was more focused than Walter, less prone to taking a lot of drugs and sleeping with women who weren't his wife. But I still didn't see him that much."
"Was Return of the Jedi different?"
"Yes, actually. One more thing Walter lied to me about. There were always ewoks in the movie, Peter, you were very sick," he said.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Did you really want me to air my whole ambivalence about life and where I belong to you? We could be having sex right now," he said. "Again. As many times as possible before you get called back to work."
She smiled at him and pulled him on top of her. He said, "Are you really turned on by the idea of Return of Jedi with no ewoks?"
"No," she said.
By four in the afternoon, they were sitting on his bed, naked, watching the Star Wars trilogy while he narrated the differences. She said, "I can't believe no one's called me." She looked down at her phone. "It's Wednesday, has no one noticed I didn't show up for work?"
"Maybe everyone knows you deserve a day off," he said. "Should we order pizza? I missed pizza. It's just different in Lagos."
Olivia called someone on her phone. He heard her talking to Broyles so he got out his own phone and ordered pizza online. Olivia was done with her call. She said, "Broyles and Charlie noticed I didn't come into work. Then they tracked my phone, saw I was here, and decided to let me have the day."
"They knew you were here with me?"
"I am at the apartment being rented by one Peter Bethlehem. You picked a new name," she said.
"It's a theme," he said.
xx
"I feel like my hair still smells like smoke," Olivia said to Astrid.
"Right, from all that time you spent with your boyfriend last night," Astrid said, grinning. "Two weeks you've had that smile on your face, it's nice."
"I didn't mean it like that," Olivia said.
"It's okay if you did," Astrid said. "Nothing wrong with having someone in your life." Astrid leaned in. "And you don't smell at all like smoke."
"It is nice to have a place to stay when we're in New York, which is all the time," Olivia said. "Though I still have to make that drive or take the train, I just do it in the morning."
"Yeah, you get to wake up all warm and snuggly and then make the trip," Astrid said.
They had stopped in front of the lab. Olivia opened the door and was relieved to see Walter wasn't in the main room where he might have heard. Walter came in from the back where he'd set up his bedroom now.
"Hello, Olivia," Walter said. He said, shy, "Did you have a nice evening?"
Olivia smiled at him. "I did. Good company, good dinner."
Walter nodded like a bobblehead. "Good to hear," he said. "Oh, I had an idea about our project. Maybe later we can do that."
Walter, she thought, knew very well Peter had moved back to the US. He knew Olivia was seeing him. He never mentioned it to Olivia, on purpose. It was occasionally a little awkward how Walter would pull Astrid away and whisper something in her ear. Then Astrid would come over and ask Olivia if Peter was getting enough sleep.
Having Peter there on a regular basis was improving her abilities. Walter even said, "I am glad, I am very glad that being happy is making you better at all this. I didn't like scaring you. I hope you know that, Olivia."
One day she went to the other Walter's abandoned lab in Harvard and stayed for ten minutes. She was completely exhausted for the rest of the day, drained. She took the train to New York City and Peter picked her up. He looked furious at her sleepy face, but he didn't say anything.
A week later, she finally connected to Rachel. "So to be clear," Rachel said, "He was never moving back to the US except you got hurt and therefore he moved here. For you."
"Basically," Olivia said.
"Do you bring that up all the time? I think I would. At least every time we had a fight," Rachel said.
"I don't bring it up at all," Olivia said.
"Because you never fight," Rachel said.
"We fight all the time, we had a fight last night."
"Who's prettier? I think he might win," Rachel said.
"You haven't seen the beard," Olivia said. "But no, we were," Olivia wondered how to translate it exactly. "I feel like he used to work for us, you know, he worked to help people. And now that he's cut Walter out of his life, he's cut that part out, too. He doesn't want to contribute."
"Not everyone spent their whole lives wanting to be FBI," Rachel said. "It's not a job for everyone."
"It is a job for him," Olivia said. "I think so. He threw the baby out with the bathwater."
"Is his father the bathwater here? The guy you still work with?"
"Walter didn't raise me," Olivia said. "I don't talk to Peter about that."
"Anymore," Rachel said, laughing. "I hear that anymore."
"It's not my place to judge," Olivia said. She hadn't really explained what happened to Rachel, but she'd tried to give her some idea.
"It's been a month since he moved back," Charlie said, as they drove to some horrific crime scene. "How is he paying for that place in Brooklyn? It doesn't look cheap."
Olivia took out her phone and cued a video. When they had pulled over for a bathroom break, she showed it to him. Charlie said, "What is that?"
"It's an art installation. Some guy had the idea for the machine and he paid Peter to make it. Someone else painted all the dancers but the mechanics are all Peter." They both watched for a moment as the little dancers rose and fell on their spokes. "All the parts were paid for and then he got fifteen thousand for it."
"Dollars?"
Olivia rolled her eyes. "That's four months rent paid for. He's not doing anything shady these days."
"He gets offered a lot of installations?"
"He gets offered a lot of things," Olivia said.
Two weeks later, she was driving Peter back to his apartment.
Olivia knew she wasn't surprised Peter had done something risky and stupid. She was surprised he had done it for her. She knew he would be insulted if she told him that.
She looked over at him, as curled into a ball as he could at his height and with his seatbelt on. She said, "I brought your syringe. Would that help?"
He shook his head. She kept driving. She got to his apartment and walked him in. He was heavy on her arm and shoulder and breathing heavily. When they got inside, he went straight for the bed. He carefully set aside his messenger bag before reaching for her hand. "I'll take the downers now, please," he muttered.
She pulled the one she'd loaded up (she'd seen him do it twice, that was enough for her to figure it out) from her jacket and put it in his hand. He said, "Could you please do it?"
"Okay," she said. She had spent enough time in Walter's lab to know how to give an injection. It took him longer than usual to pass out but he finally did.
Six hours later, he started to come to. She handed him a glass of water and the four pills she'd seen him take every morning. He said, "Actually, I could use a double."
She got out of bed and said, "I'm assuming your pills, not the water."
He swallowed the additional four pills she'd brought him. She sat crosslegged on the bed, hand on his thigh. "So, last night you called me to pick you up."
"Sorry about that," he said. "My plan mostly worked."
"Tell me about the plan," she said.
"I started this plan at the same time I moved here," he said. Olivia frowned. "The rest of you might pretend you don't trust Nina, but I actually don't trust her. Or William Bell."
"So you broke into Massive Dynamic," Olivia said. She didn't add successfully, though she had yet to get a call about the break in. Maybe Broyles would just send Charlie to arrest Peter and not tell her at all. Charlie would call her, though, she thought.
Peter smiled wanly. He said, "It was a really good break in. I called in a lot of favors, you know. And spent a lot of money. Which was absolutely worth it."
"What did you get? Are the police coming for us?"
"They'd be coming for me, not us," he said, with another smile. "And I got a lot. Part of the break in pre-planning was finding out where Massive Dynamic had their super secret files hidden. Not surprisingly, they're all paper. I only took two actual files, yours and mine, the rest I scanned. I think there's enough in there to make sure Broyles gets everything he can from Nina."
"Which part of the break-in had you nearly catatonic?" She was already upset, at Peter, at the thought of a file on her.
"I went into Bell's office. There was something in there, I don't know what - some kind of sound or smell, something, after ten minutes, I could barely walk. He didn't have anything in his office anyway. Or his safe," Peter said. He flinched again, like the mention of the office was bringing him back to last night's pain.
"You know that was a really stupid thing to do," Olivia said.
"Actually, I put a lot of planning into it, to make sure it wasn't stupid," Peter said. He closed his eyes. "If it weren't for whatever was in that office, I would have made it out with no one knowing."
"They had a file on me?"
"Yeah," he said. He reached for her hand. "The cortexiphan kids. It has extensive notes from Bell and Walter."
"And they had a file on you," she said.
"Of course they did," he said. He was quiet for a minute. "I think I need to go back to sleep."
"You need drugs?" She started to get up.
"No, I'm just going to sleep. Your file is in my bag," he said.
She didn't go for it immediately. She watched him sleep. He didn't look peaceful.
There were two paper files in Peter's messenger bag. She didn't look through his. If he told her it was okay, she would, she decided. She did look through hers. There was very little new information. She hadn't realized Bell had arranged her scholarship to the boarding school she attended. Everything else she knew, though it was unbelievably infuriating to see how Bell and Walter had referred to her, how clinical it all was. The pictures were scary because she didn't remember any of them being taken. What had happened to her memory?
Peter made an unhappy sound but he was still asleep. She rubbed his back which she hoped was soothing. Peter's messenger bag also had what she assumed was a hand held scanner, three thumb drives, the burner phone he'd texted her from, and an old book. The First People, she read. She flipped through it but it looked meaningless. Actually, it looked ridiculous.
She was waiting for Broyles to call. She took a deep breath and called him. Broyles said, "Dunham."
"Hi, I, I would like to take a sick day."
"Are you okay?" He sounded concerned and confused.
"I'm okay, it's just, Peter. Peter is sick and I want to just make sure he's okay."
"Is he okay?"
She realized she had never told Broyles about Peter's issues. She hadn't told anyone.
She'd left Broyles hanging for a second. She said, "Peter has brain damage. From the attack. He has these, um, it's all the memories. He said it's like a head rush when you get up too quickly, except with nausea and extremely vivid hallucinations. It's usually just a tiny stutter, but sometimes it's really bad. It was really bad last night."
"He's had this for 6 months? I suppose there's no chance he'd talk to Dr. Bishop about it," Broyles said. Olivia forgot that he genuinely seemed to like Peter.
"According to Peter, I am only allowed to speak to Walter about him if he's dead, or he's in the kind of situation where he would die unless Walter was consulted," Olivia said. "But if something comes up, you can call me."
"I'll sent Agent Farnsworth and Agent Francis first. We'll call you if they need the backup," Broyles said.
"So nothing's come up today?" Olivia remembered she was concerned that someone would come for Peter. She was sure now Broyles didn't know about the break in yet.
"No. Did you think something would come up?"
"No, sir," she said. She said goodbye and stretched out next to Peter.
He opened his eyes. "I meant that about Walter, by the way. Don't you call him."
"How are you now?"
Peter frowned and closed his eyes. He rolled on his back. "I don't know. It almost feels worse. I can't do this if it gets worse." His voice broke.
She swallowed hard and looked away. She said, "If it gets worse, I will call Walter."
"No, you won't. I'll go to the hospital," Peter said. He had opened his eyes and he guided her chin back to looking at him. He was in pain. She'd never seen him so clearly unable to function, not since he'd left Boston. If he didn't get better, she was going to call Walter.
"I'll be fine. Can you get my barbiturates?"
She got up and got another syringe and vial. He got up and said, "And I'm going to use the bathroom before I knock myself out."
"Do you need me to do the injection again?"
"I've got it," he said. "I swear to God, if you call Walter when I'm out -"
"I won't," she said. "If you don't feel better when you wake up, though, I make no promises."
He'd injected himself. He glared at her, but he passed out.
xx
When Peter woke up, Olivia was gone. She'd left a note: call me by midnight or i call Walter. He almost laughed. He called her right after he'd taken his pills. "I'm fine," he said.
"Are you feeling better?"
"I am, thank you. I think I just needed a break," he said. "A double dose of barbiturates and I'm all better."
"I always meant to ask you, why do you inject it instead of pills?"
"Pills take too long," he said. He was transferring the scans of Massive Dynamic's files from the scanner and drives to his computer. Then he would organize them and hand them over to Broyles. "How was your day?"
"Well, we finally found Sanford Harris."
"Where had he disappeared to?"
"We're not sure yet, but we found him today in pieces." Olivia sounded sanguine about it. Peter was not surprised.
He said, "Was it gross or incredibly gross?"
"We didn't find his head, but the rest of him was just dismembered. So not even close to horrific," she said.
"You are so jaded."
"I'm in Boston tonight and tomorrow morning, but I might be able to have dinner with you tomorrow night. Unless something comes up," she said.
"I'll be here," he said.
Two days later Peter waited at a coffee place two blocks from his apartment. He'd specifically chosen an outside table, taken a double dose of his pills, and lit a cigarette. He still couldn't see from the initial rush and the pain when he first saw Broyles. When Peter was coherent and focused again, Broyles was already sitting across from him.
"Are you okay?"
"Peachy," Peter said. "It's always a little painful when I see someone for the first time in a while."
Broyles looked slightly less grim. He said, "You called." It was almost a hello, how are you?
"I did," Peter said. He pushed a thick envelope on the table towards Broyles. "I managed to acquire certain files. From Massive Dynamic. Nina Sharp and William Bell have been conducting experiments that are nearly as awful as the ones my father did back in the 80s. Right on the top there, you can see that they've cloned a boy, had him slash them raised by a number of their employees, all waiting to see if he develops mind control. That's just the one on top. There's a drive in there that has another 40 files that will give you all the leverage you need over Nina. Oh, if you look at my file, you'll see print outs of Bell speculating on what I was injected with and wondering if he could replicate it. So he's getting news from our side."
Now Broyles looked furious. "You did not acquire these legally, did you?"
"Do you care? I don't work for you. I'm not an agent of yours or a consultant. I am someone who wants to make sure Olivia doesn't get injured or killed from being put in the middle of William Bell's schemes," Peter said.
"But you didn't tell Agent Dunham," Broyles stated.
"She had no idea until after I acquired the files. Hers isn't in there, by the way. The rest of the cortexiphan subjects are. Nina knows where nearly every single one of them are."
Peter looked at Broyles and thought he would not want to be Nina at that moment.
When he got home, Olivia was sitting on his bed. She said, "You met with my boss."
"We just did," he said. "Did he text you five seconds ago?"
"More like a minute," she said. "How'd it go?"
"Surprising," Peter said. He took off his shoes and sat down next to her. He said, "Broyles offered to be my go between if I wanted help from Walter with my brain."
Olivia frowned. "I could do that."
"You are already too much in the middle of me and Walter."
He watched her process. She said finally, "He's saved your life. Twice."
He shook his head and laid back on the bed. "So what?"
Olivia said, "I know, I get that you think what he did to you outweighs everything else he's done -"
"But what?" He rubbed his eyes.
She laid down next to him. Her blazer would be wrinkled. She said, "But nothing. Sorry. And I think I would actually like to decide when I'm too much in the middle in the future."
"Okay," he said, watching her.
"I'd like it if you quit smoking," she said, smiling. "I do hope Walter can help."
"I hope he can help without me having to ever see him in person," Peter said. "While we're wishing I hope Broyles gets to the bottom of what Bell and Nina Sharp are up to and you don't have to -"
"These abilities, Peter, I have a responsibility," she said. He did not point out how rote that sounded. He knew she believed it completely, he just wondered how much that was Walter and Bell's childhood inculcation.
"I was going to say I hope you don't have to work blindly."
"Were you?" She took off her blazer and let it fall on the floor.
"Absolutely," Peter said. "And you will find who killed Harris and lock them up instead of thanking them and we'll have Charlie and Sonia over for dinner -"
"We will?" She looked skeptical.
"You don't want to?"
"Are we doing couples dates now?" She started unbuttoning her shirt.
"We've been together for a while," he said. "I don't know, isn't that what people do?"
She almost laughed. "We're not people like that. Also, we've been together all of four months or two months depending on how you count it." She looked over at him while she removed her shirt. "Do you really want do that?"
He'd seen that flash as she realized that four months was actually a longer time than he usually managed. Then he got distracted as Olivia removed her bra. "Should I answer that," he said, "Or did you have other plans for right now?"
She was already unbuttoning and shoving down her pants. She said, "Plans you're overdressed for."