Fanfic: What Peter Knows

[assassin]

Title: What Peter Knows
Fandom: Fringe
Character/Pairing: Bolivia
Rating: Teen
Genre: Angsty wangsty romance
Summary: Peter knows he's in love, and he hates it.
Spoilers: ALL OF THEM.  Yes.  I ate all the spoilers.
Notes: I waffled between writing fluff and turning it into something more sinister, but that would have been effort.  Instead, have angst because I don't have anything better to do at work.  This is the first fanfic I've written in years, so treat me as gently as you might a delicate butterfly.  An angsty delicate butterfly.  Unbeta'ed.

Edit: This fic was nominated for an award!

Peter pulls Olivia from the tank and he knows he loves her, and it's something he automatically hates himself for.  Love doesn't pay; love isn't practical.  Love is dangerous.  He presses his lips to her forehead, cold and clammy, then rests his cheek upon wet hair to hold her until the shuddering subsides.  He knows it's love because she clings to his arms and he suddenly feels important.

He wants to leave Olivia when she stares down those damn test lights and knows she's going to die.  It's a simple solution to his problem, after all.  Peter's thoughts waiting for the elevator are in tumult-- she deserves it.  At least I don't have to worry about that love thing anymore.  Walter's going to be disappointed.  She can't do it.  She's going to die alone.  And it's the last thought that starts his legs marching and sends him wandering back despite the fact that he's screaming inside.  Just let her go.  But Peter can't bear the thought of Olivia dying alone for the sake of a city of strangers whose mouths will seal and lungs will starve if she doesn't succeed.

His shock when she manages to turn off the lights isn't nearly as strong as his surge of disappointment at surviving.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Walter loves Olivia too; Peter knows that much.  He thinks it's because Walter has found someone with whom he can share his crazy, and it would be kind of cute that Olivia's starting to buy into his cortexiphan conspiracy except that it's driving her mad.  Olivia's bonding with his dad would be nice, but he keeps putting her in the tank or hooking machines up to scan her brain and Peter's wondering how long it will be until Walter convinces Olivia that the best thing to do will be drill holes in her skull or something equally dangerous.

Not that Peter would care, of course, because he didn't care and that's what Peter does best.  Uncaring.  Aloof.  Even being lofty at times.  Walter asks him to hold Olivia's hand when she dreams of killing a stripper and Peter does it, but he does his best to ignore the feeling of rightness that skin-on-skin contact creates.  Peter doesn't want to love her.  He doesn't want to love anyone.

Even so, all those little moments over the last few months are hard to ignore.  Instants of intimacy-- a comforting hug, the drinks after work, the occasional brush of fingertips.  Damn them all.

Maybe that's why he started spending time with Rachel.  He doesn't love Rachel, but she's nice -- very pretty, maybe even prettier than Olivia -- and he can tell by the flush in her cheeks when he comes into the room that she's attracted to him.  Raw, animal attraction is something Peter does almost as well as not caring.  He has sex with her for the first time when Olivia is with Ella at a park, and afterward Rachel cries (one of the most awkward experiences of his life) and tells him all about her ex-husband.  Peter is good at avoiding the plague of caring about people.  He pats her hand once -- how do you respond to a break down like that? -- and doesn't waste time leaving.

He passes Olivia on her way in as he's going out, and his shirt is buttoned wrong and one of his shoes is unlaced.  Her skin flushes like Rachel's but she's hurt, not aroused, and she doesn't speak to him before hurrying Ella into the kitchen for grilled cheese and he gets in the car and gives the steering wheel a few pounds of his forehead.

For a genius who faked his way through Harvard, Peter felt sometimes like the stupidest guy around.

Peter spends the next few weeks sleeping in the lab with Jean, who gives an occasional comforting lowe and chews her cud like nobody else.  His dreams are confusion -- sometimes he's stroking platinum blonde hair and a supple figure only improved by motherhood, and sometimes he's moving atop a woman with less of a figure and a barely-there smile and accusatory eyes.  Astrid thinks he's going nuts but doesn't remark upon it, because there's nobody out there more nuts than Walter.

He's in the middle of another uncomfortable dream in the office when he's awakened by shuffling footsteps and an urgent voice.

"Do you think you could get me some apple cobbler?"

Peter shields his eyes with the back of his arm.  "No, Walter.  There's no apple cobbler left."

"Oh," he says, and Walter sounds very disturbed by this development.  "Not... not in the whole city?"

"Not in the whole world."

Astrid breezes past the door.  "I'll run to the store."

"Fantastic!  Do you think I could come?  I have a desperate need for plastic forks..."

Walter's footsteps subside and Peter rolls over to try to go back to sleep.  Weird as his dreams may be, they're nowhere near as weird as the reality he's trying to escape.  He goes back to sleep and it's fitful.  Peter knows things.  He's chasing dreams for minutes, hours, days, occasionally catching a fleeting glimpse of Olivia's wounded expression before she's gone again and he's left searching.

When he wakes up, he thinks he's still dreaming to see Olivia's face over him.

"Is, uh, is Walter here?"  She wraps her arms around herself like she's trying to hold her heart inside her ribs and rocks gently back and forth.  Olivia has lost weight, he notices-- the bones in her wrists are more prominent and there's something hollow in her eyes.

Peter wants to bundle her up and hold her until she warms but that's the kind of stupid thinking that got him into trouble in the first place.

He sits up and scrubs a hand through his hair.  "Last time I saw him, he was going on a field trip with Astrid.  Why?  What's wrong?"

"I've been..."  Olivia shakes herself, bites her lip.  "Nothing.  It's not important."  She's so God damned pathetic.  It's hard to imagine this frail wisp of a woman running after people with a badge professionally, and the very thought of it is terrifying to Peter.

Not that Peter cares, of course.

"Come on, tell me," he says, picking himself up out of his nest of blankets on the floor behind the desk.  He looks rumpled and he runs his hand through his hair again to force it into some semblance of neatness, but all he succeeds in doing is making it stick up more.

Olivia frowns.  "How long have you been sleeping here?  Is there something wrong with your hotel room?"

"Oh," Peter says, and he feels stupid.  "Yeah.  Walter's been doing calculations in the bathroom.  He put sheets of contact paper over the toilet and he stands there all night singing the Beach Boys and trying to prove the Theory of Relativity wrong.  I thought if I heard him sing 'Surfin'' one more time Imight have to drown myself."

A flash of that almost-there smile and then Olivia's shaking again.  "Well."

"Well," he agrees.

"I'll come back later."  She turns to leave, but at the doorway she stops and turns.  "You should call Rachel.  She's worried you don't like her because you haven't spoken to her since..."  Olivia's mouth claps shut.  Her throat works.  "Anyway, I can only comfort her so much."

"I didn't mean to hurt you," Peter says, and it might be the first honest thing he's said in years.

"I'm not surprised."  Olivia almost laughs, but it's a mirthless sound just as pathetic as her trembling.  "It was always like that in high school, too.  Rachel's the pretty one.  She's popular.  I mean, it makes sense that you would..."  She trails off.  "I'll come back later."

She leaves and Peter's running after her before he can think twice about it, a frenzied mess of stuck-up hair and socks with boxer shorts.

"Hey," he says, catching her in the hall just outside the lab door.  A student passes, staring.

Peter's hand closes around her upper arm, and she feels brittle underneath her bulky black jacket, fragile.  He turns Olivia around and kisses her.  Her lips are dry and cold and she stiffens under his touch.  All those times he had hugged her and touched her, he had thought about doing just that, and now that he is she's pulling away from him and looking at him like he just stabbed her with a knife.

"I'll come back later," Olivia repeats, her mantra of denial, and she leaves so quickly that he doesn't have time to chase her.

Peter smacks his head into the wall.  It doesn't help anymore than it had when he had done it to the steering wheel, but he gets some vengeful pleasure out of the perceived pain inflicted upon inanimate objects.  A passing pair of freshman nearly lose their eyeballs from staring so hard.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.