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“Do you think we’re doing this wrong?”
Peter’s staring at the ceiling, hands behind his head, lost in some contemplation.
“What do you mean?” Olivia almost mumbles, only half listening, smiling lightly, her eyes closed as she allows her body to come down from the absolutely glorious high it has just experienced a few minutes ago.
It's been a week since that night in Brooklyn. A week in which, neither of them has even pretended to be interested in anything else except the all consuming need to devour each other physically, when they could be alone with each other.
While the emotional quotient of her past relationships have always been questionable, she’s always enjoyed fairly good sexual dynamics with her lovers. But with Peter…the experience was fairly unprecedented. At a level that she can’t say she has experienced until now.
If this was doing it wrong, she wasn’t quite sure what was doing it right.
“It's 3.00 PM on a Saturday afternoon and we’re in bed.” Peter reaches his arm out to brush against her waist.
“And that’s a problem, why?” She asks, trying to recenter her focus back to the world around her.
“It's not a problem in the slightest.” He grins. “Not in and of itself that is. It just seems like we should be doing more in our situation, don't you think?” He gives her a questioning look.
“What more should we be doing?” She asks distractedly as she turns to him, tracing the mole on his shoulder, thinking how nearly perfectly round it was.
Just so nearly.
“Don’t know. Go outside, take a walk, eat a meal, catch a movie?” He raises an eyebrow at her.
“Didn’t we just eat sometime ago?” She points out, turning then on her stomach as she meets his gaze then. She stretches the arch of her back, feeling her knots loosen as she does.
She feels limbless, sated, just happy on a different level altogether.
How did they ever go so long without getting their hands on each other? Olivia thinks it should be impossible, an insult to the forces of eros and other mythical sex gods to have denied themselves something so great.
“Thai takeout, eaten on the couch from containers is not what I meant, Olivia.” He points out wryly. “I mean like dinner. You know, get to know each other, be seen in public.”
“Why?” She asks, slowly blinking at him, without comprehension. “I already know you and we can’t do this in public.”
He chuckles at that, a low rumble in his throat that she feels incredibly turned on by suddenly. “How are you the hardest catch and also the easiest lay of my life?”
“I am a woman of deep contradictions.” She shrugs. She’s helpless to burrow her head against his shoulder, against that nearly perfect mole of his.
“That you are, and I dig that about you.” He brings his hand to weave into her hair, grinning. “But a little romance never hurt anyone, did it? How about we go out today, to dinner, maybe catch a movie afterwards?”
Out, for extended hours. Out in the world, where there were other people and she couldn’t have him all to herself. Where she cannot touch him anytime she pleases.
It feels so restrictive .
“Do we have to?” She says unenthusiastically. “I have Netflix and more takeout menus if you don’t want to eat Thai again.”
He laughs, taking in her reluctant expression. “Well, we don’t have to. But it would be nice to.” He bends down to kiss her softly. “As much as I am thoroughly enjoying our very extended sexcapade, I am starting to feel like we’re vampires, just mating behind closed blinds all day long.”
“Don't exaggerate.” She chides him, catching his cocky smile.
“I am not. I’ve actually forgotten what direct sunlight feels like on my face.” He smirks. “Not to mention the multiple bite marks. You almost drew blood a couple of times there.”
“God, okay.” She groans, feeling her ears grow hot, burying her face in the pillow. “If it’ll shut you up, we can go out this evening I guess.”
She could behave herself for a couple of hours. She had kept her hands to herself for a couple of years, surely she could manage a couple of hours.
“Not just to the pizza place around the block?” He clarifies, his eyes widening with hope. “To a place with actual table cloth, mood lighting and other well-dressed people?”
“Whatever you want.” She mumbles from her pillow, before she looks up, giving him a teasing smile. “I’ll even wear a dress if you like.”
“You have a dress? He says, fake incredulity all over his face. “Like for real? Wonder what color it possibly could be?”
“We’ll find out, won’t we?” She gives him a mildly reproachful look.
“And high heels? How about those? Do you have those too?”
“Don’t push it.” She turns her gaze furrowing at him.
“Fair enough.” He laughs. “I’ll make a reservation for us, someplace nice .” He emphasizes, giving her a meaningful look. “You better clean up good, Dunham.”
She simply gives him a look at that.
“Though I don’t see why exactly we need to do this?” She sighs. “Make all this effort to dress up and go out, and eat in public and ask each other questions that we already know the answers to.”
“It's dinner in a restaurant, Olivia. Not a torture chamber. Couples do it all the time.”
“Couples do it so they can have sex afterwards.” She looks at him, in an obvious way. “Which as you have pointed out, we’re already doing, like a lot.”
“I know. And I am beyond stoked that we are. Believe me.” He laughs. “I just would also like us to have a first date at some point. It just seems like we skipped many steps before we got here, you know.”
Here was them in her apartment, lazing around on the weekend, just being with each other, amidst the many vigorous bouts of shared physical activity. Here was them spending pretty much every waking moment and sleeping moment outside of work, together.
Here was them eating three out of three meals together…
The technical term for which would be cohabiting, she realizes.
Except they weren’t.
Except they were…
“For the record we’re not skipping any steps.” She says sitting up then, feeling a sudden weight sink into her stomach, an unknown rush of intense anger taking root right there. “I am just catching us up to speed. And you only have yourself to blame for that.”
His smile dulls as she says that and Olivia rolls her eyes, knowing exactly where his mind has jumped to. She gives him a pointed look.
“If you hadn’t been so stupid and run off to another universe just because you were mad at your dad, we would have been engaged by now.”
“We would have been what now?” He looks up at her in some surprise.
“You heard me.” She shrugs unapologetically as she slips on her panties from her under the blanket. “In fact, if you had just gotten your act together and asked me out a year ago, like you should have, we would have probably gotten married by now, not going on a first date.”
“My bad.” He grins at her, tickled by the way she was bringing up these major milestones so nonchalantly. “I must have missed the part where you expressed even a hint of interest in me till such time there was an actual world ending catastrophe around the corner.”
“Grow up Peter. We’re not in middle school.” She scoffs, as she reaches her hand down and feels the floor for her shirt, which she slips on, only to realize it's not hers after all. “Like you didn't know. Like you haven’t always known. You really should have done something about it.” Her eyes zero in on him then, with a mildly disapproving look. “Why didn’t you do something about it exactly? Aren’t you supposed to be good with women?”
He gives her an amused look, as he too sits up now. “Are you seriously blaming me for not being an unprofessional jackass and hitting on my partner, a woman who was heartbroken and heavily grieving a past love who died in the most horrific way possible?”
“Oh come off it. Like you care about being professional. And you could have waited the appropriate amount of time and then made your move.” She says dismissively. “A year is a good amount of time. I was most definitely not heartbroken then.”
“And you’d have really said yes? If I asked you then?” He says curiously.
“If you’d asked me, more likely than not, yes, I would have.” She nods, again feeling an irrational burst of anger. “And now because of you, we’re actually late. We could have gotten here sooner.”
“And that is something that bothers you now?” He says slowly.
“It doesn’t bother me. It makes me mad.” She frowns now.
He’s watching her expressions carefully, trying to no doubt calibrate the information he has on hand to an inference. And it's obvious he is failing.
“I am sorry, what is happening here exactly?” He asks then, looking at her puzzled.
She can only glare in response. “I have to go on a fucking first date with you after three years of us knowing each other. That’s what’s happening.”
“Okay. So we won’t go. Problem solved.” He looks a bit frazzled now at her increasingly agitated state. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. It's fine Olivia.” He offers her a placating smile.
“No. It's not fine. And we’re definitely going. The tablecloth and the mood lighting and the dress, it's all going to happen. I am even adding in the high heels. And it's going to be great.” She says, almost like she’s issuing a threat.
It's clear he’s worried now, taken aback even. “Olivia, I am getting some very mixed signals here.” He says cautiously. “Can you maybe calm down for a second and tell me what exactly is wrong?”
“What is wrong ?” Her voice frays at the edges with the stress overloading it. “You want to know what’s wrong? You said you imagined going down this path with me for so long. Then why didn't you do something about it earlier?” She asks almost in an accusatory tone. “Why did you hesitate? Why didn’t you just tell me how you felt Peter.”
“Why didn’t you?” He shoots back, without thinking. He regrets it immediately, knowing inherently that it wasn’t probably the smartest response he could offer.
“I did. I crossed a universe to tell you that.” She counters then, like he already knows she would.
“Only when your hand was forced.” He says. “You could have told me earlier too. In case you were wondering, you had all that time too, Olivia. And I did try back then. That night, at Massive Dynamic, I tried to show you how I felt and you just shut me down.”
“You know why I did that. What was I supposed to do? Ignore the problem of a disappearing building and just proceed to make out with you.” She glowers at him, before her face turns almost pained.
“But why didn’t you try again Peter? Why did you just back off so easily?”
Peter bites his tongue at the sight of her face, which seems to ache from some feeling she was not able to communicate to him and channeling it into anger instead. To stop himself from reminding her why exactly he couldn’t have done that.
He wants to point out to her that he had in fact asked her out afterwards, even if he had admittedly copped out and stopped short of suggesting a real date, afraid she would say no if he had made it seem like an outing with romantic intent.
He fights the urge to bring up just how badly that had gone too, the crushing disappointment he had felt at her blatant discomfort with him that evening, the way she kept looking away from his face and giving stilted responses to his attempts at conversation. How her behavior had made him question if she felt anything at all for him, had him wondering if he had been just imagining things all that while.
He wants to bring up the fact that ultimately, she was the one who had pulled away from him in those months following that night.
But instead, he simply nods in an apologetic way, deciding to just take the blame, knowing it was probably the safer thing to do in this situation, the remit of which he can’t say he really understands but does not want to exacerbate under any circumstances, given the straight up fire that’s burning in her eyes at this point.
Things were still so new between them. He doesn’t want to do anything to jeopardize what he has finally, after dreaming about it for only as long as he’s known her.
What he has in fact fought so hard to have.
“Maybe I should have.” He says softly. “So I am sorry, I didn’t.”
“I don’t accept your apology.” She says furiously, slapping his bare chest without any force, more an indication of her intense anger than any real aggression. But it catches him by surprise.
“Why couldn’t you have just asked me again?”
“Olivia, come on. Be fair. I didn’t know that this was something you wanted.” He feels compelled to point out the obvious now, even though he had decided to just take it on the chin and let it go, not but a minute ago. “Of course I knew you felt something for me. But I had no idea what it meant, what you wanted for it to mean. All that time, I never knew where I stood with you. You barely let me in. So what should I have done exactly? If I forced the issue with you, you would have just retreated from me altogether and it would have ended very badly. Where would that have left us exactly? We worked together. And on things where the stakes were so important.”
“You know for a fact that wouldn’t have happened.” She says resolutely.
“Yeah, because you and I have the world’s easiest relationship right?’ He says sarcastically now. “No friction ever happens with us.”
“Shut up.” She hits him on the chest again in the same outraged way. “We’ve managed to survive the worst thing that could have happened to us and we’re here now aren’t we? In fact we even managed to continue working together on the fate of the universe till very recently, while things were literally the worst possible they could have been between us. You really think that anything else could have been such a deal breaker.”
She narrows her eyes at him. “The real reason is not that. You knew, didn’t you? That you and I would pretty much be end game if we got together. That's why you didn't do anything about it. Not because you thought it would end badly but because you knew it would be great and you panicked.”
“I am flattered that you think I am so perceptive.” He laughs then, bringing his hand to the bridge of his nose as he feels a mild headache creep up his temples. “But no. I am not clairvoyant Olivia. I have no way of knowing anything like that.”
“Don’t lie. Deep down you knew. You knew and you didn’t do anything about it when you should have.” She says insistently, trying to shove him again. But this time he grabs her hand mindway, gently but firmly.
“Will you stop hitting me?” He holds her glowering gaze for a good few seconds before her arm relaxes and he lets go.
“Look I am all up for a good fight now and then. But if you’d like me to truly participate, you’re going to have to let me into this argument that you’ve clearly started in your mind and forgotten to loop me into.”
He hesitantly brings his hand to her cheek then, feeling boosted by the fact that she doesn’t flinch from his touch, like he half-expects her to.
He absorbs the heat coming off of her skin, like her anger is literally radiating off of her. He uses his thumb to stroke her face gently, trying to iron out the tiny frown lines that mar her face.
“Let's just rewind this conversation. You were zen as a clam literally five minutes ago. I ask you to go out to dinner with me and you suddenly transform into this intense rage machine. So, what changed? And can we try it this time without the physical violence please? Please tell me exactly what is wrong?”
“What is wrong is this Peter. Us. How good we’re together.” She huffs in extreme indignation.
“Yes we’re very good. Great even, I’ll venture.” He smiles in a baffled way, unable to align her words with her enraged tone. “And that realization makes you mad at me, because you wanted it to not be this good?” He asks with a patient smile, fighting hard to keep the incredulity from his voice.
To think he had naively believed that all of these years of having known had given him some modicum of insight into her motivations and actions. But clearly, he knew nothing at all about what really went on in that mind of hers.
She moves away from his hold, shaking her head. “It makes me mad at you because we could have been happy so much earlier. We could have had all this earlier. And we just wasted all that time, because you didn’t tell me before.”
“Right.” It finally dawns on him.
“Got there finally, genius?” She says dryly, still fuming at him. She pulls away her gaze from him and stares in front of her, the set of lips tight, unrelenting.
After a minute or two passes, he lays a hand on her shoulder gently. “Sweetheart,” he hazards carefully, not missing the way she glares at him again when he utters the endearment. “I understand that you’re feeling bad about that. But you know that’s kind of an impossible expectation you’re making there right?”
“Am I really?” She says turning back to look at him. “Because it seems like an entirely reasonable expectation for me to make. You had feelings for me and you didn’t do anything about it till I literally tracked you across another world and begged you to come home with me because I didn’t want to lose you. And then we didn’t even get to be together because…” She pauses, freezing mid sentence as she realizes what she was about to say.
“What?” He says grimly. “Finish what you wanted to say Olivia, we both know what you were going to get at anyway.”
She stays silent.
“Is all this because you’re still angry about that, about her?” He urges, feeling like the room was spinning in that moment.
It had to be that. What else could it be? She wasn’t over it? She would never be over it.
And that meant only one thing.
They couldn’t last.
This was how it would end all over again for him, Peter thinks, feeling his heart bottom out. The whole dream come true love story he imagined he was having, decimated right in her bed, with her right next to him, with him yet again, somehow only in his boxers.
How much deja vu should any human really get?
She continues to be silent, not meeting his eyes, still seething quietly.
Better him than her to rip the bandaid then, he thinks.
“It's okay Olivia.” He nods, his voice low and thick. “I guess it was too much to expect we’d get past this, for you to be okay with everything, and if that's what this is about, then we should stop what we’re doing here. There’s no point. We can end this right now. I don’t want to make things difficult for you…”
“Stop. Just stop.” She cuts him off, flashing even angrier eyes at him.
Olivia refuses to give her any power over them. That woman may have taken the milestones she was owed, robbed her of many firsts. But she has come to realize that she will never in fact have him, never have the knowledge of him in a way she does, never have the power to affect him like this.
She will never be the person he looks at like Peter was looking at her right now, with that intensity and desperation and hopelessness, thinking no doubt he has lost her all over again.
She knows that now and the certainty is what makes everything else bearable, irrelevant even with the passage of time.
“Did you even pay attention to what I have been saying for so long. I am not angry about her. My feelings for you existed long before there was ever a her so can you do me the courtesy of not believing every issue I have is about you and her. There are in fact other factors to our relationship, Peter. So for once can we deal with us without having to make it about her.”
She points a finger at him for good measure then. “And don’t you ever try to break up with me in bed again. Actually, don’t you ever try to break up with me. Period.”
It takes everything in his power to not start laughing as he absorbs her words, knowing he would risk getting hit again for real if he did that. The relief that floods his veins is almost like a drug induced high and the only thing that stops him from kissing her right then is the fact that she’s still entirely displeased with him and shooting daggers with her eyes.
“You’re right. I am sorry.” He nods.
“I don’t care about her alright. I care about the time she’s taken away from us. I care that we’ve lost so much time. That's something that should bother you as well. You should care too.” She sighs, before she looks at him with some trepidation.
“Unless you don’t of course.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” He asks uneasily.
“ What do you think we’re doing here Peter? Is this just some casual fling for you?” She looks at him then.
“I am sorry, how did you get there exactly?” He fails to keep the laughter in this time, as he smirks loudly. “And also, in what universe, did this strike you as a good example of a casual fling exactly?”
Predictably, she looks far from amused.
“You were the one who used the word extended sexcapade to describe what we were doing didn’t you?”
“Olivia, are you serious?” He manages to ask mildly. “You’re going to take a joke I made as a real indicator of how I think about us. And more to the point, you really think that’s what this is about for me?”
He finds himself getting very angry.
She shrugs looking at her hands. “I don’t know what to think given you’ve treated this whole conversation like a joke.”
More outrage builds inside him quickly and rather inexplicably at her response, takes him by surprise even.
Barring their first encounter and the friction laced skirmishes of those two days, Peter has always consciously avoided targeting any kind of hostility towards her, more so after she’d confided in him about having been abused as a child.
The world had hurt her enough. His father certainly had. But he had vowed to himself that he would never be someone she would ever have cause for fear from. While not a man of gentle persuasion by any means, it was almost like a safety switch inside of him operated of its own accord when it came to her. Which is why he was careful to not so much as give her an angry look or even raise his voice, even when internally he’d battled with his share of frustrations with her.
Except today, right now.
Who knew the thing that could cause his safety switch to fail was having his feelings for her doubted.
He is most definitely angry at her , and he’s about to lose it, at her .
Instinctively, he counts to five in his head, trying to contain some of it at least, knowing it was going to spill out of him anyway.
His words come out enraged, like he expects they will. Still, he manages to not shout and counts it as a victory.
“You think I’ve been around these past three years, that I came back from another universe, that I’ve beaten myself up over the clusterfuck of the past few months, obsessing every second over how much I fucked up with you and how I could just not see , all because I was looking to score some action?”
She looks up at him, surprised by the cutting tone of his voice, the latent aggression.
Immediately, he regrets it, but his anger is pressing up against him too hard for him to simply swallow it.
But what he can do is manage to channel it into something less threatening, which is to become a smartass about it.
“I am sorry to break this to you Olivia. But as undoubtedly attractive as you are and as great as all the action has been, if sex is all I wanted, you would not be who I would be going to. I do not have to put myself through such extreme levels of self-flagellation if that’s what I was in this for.”
“I bet.” She gives him a thin smile.
“Oh, you want to?” He says sharply, growing more incensed by the second. “You know I happen to have open anytime deals with at least twenty six women around the world right? Two of whom incidentally happen to live in this city, within a three block radius of my place. That’s how easy it would be for me to get laid. All I would literally need to do is take a five minute walk.”
“Great. Why don’t you then?” She says flatly. “Ring up the Boston chapter of your playmate rolodex and go have a good time with any one one or both of them. Why are you wasting your time here? I bet you’d have more fun with them anyway.”
He gives her a starkly disapproving look then, his expression turning sour. He’s only going to get angrier if he continues this argument with her, he realizes. And he’s going to start saying things he’ll probably regret, things he won’t be able to take back.
He will not screw this up with her. He cannot screw this up with her. Not after everything, not after finally getting to this place.
Which means, the safest thing for him to do is get out of here for now, before he says or does something that changes that.
“You know, I’ve tried to be understanding because clearly you’re going through something. But I am really losing my patience here. First, you yell at me for not having some magical hindsight to ask you out a second after I met you and have us shopping for preschools by now, and now you want me to go screw other women. So, which is it? You want me to leave? You want me to stay? Do you want me to have a threesome with other women or would you like me to create a wormhole and travel back in time and start relentlessly hitting on you a second after the six month mark that John dies till such time you say yes?”
“Stop being ridiculous, Peter.”
“I am being ridiculous?” He gets up then, and reaches for his jeans, which he pulls up swiftly. He makes quick work of his socks and belt then.
“You’re giving me actual whiplash and I am the one being ridiculous here?” He repeats, rolling his eyes. He looks around the floor before his eyes land on her.
“Where are you going?” She asks, suddenly realizing he was a lot more dressed than he was a minute ago.
“Home. Of the two crazy people I know, it occurs to me, my father is the easier one to deal with right now. At least Walter’s brand of insanity is something I have practice dealing with.” He points to his henley, the one she had accidentally worn.
“I am gonna need that back, Olivia.”
“You can’t leave.” She says, a low panic building in her for all of a minute, before it changes into a startling certainty.
“I think you’ll find I can.” He says in a tired voice. “Now, can I please have my shirt back?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “You’re not leaving.”
He looks at her, almost pleading now. “Olivia. Please, I really don’t want to fight with you when I can’t understand what the hell is going on with you. Can you just give me my shirt back so I can go? Look, I’ll call you later okay. We can talk then, but this is pointless, what we’re doing right now.”
“No.” She says again stubbornly.
“No?” He looks at her then with genuine curiosity.
“No.” She repeats. “We’re going to go out tonight, on a date.”
He shakes his head. “I am afraid I am not really in the mood at the moment.”
“I don’t care.” She calmly shrugs then, reaching for the remote on her nightstand, she turns the television on. “Get in the mood then. You have four hours. We can even fuck again if that helps. But we leave at 7.00. And make a reservation at a nice place .”
He blinks in non-comprehension at her. “You know you can’t hold me hostage here right? That's not how this works?”
“What are you going to do, Peter? Walk out of here shirtless, in the dead of winter?” She gives him a challenging look, though the corners of her lips are turning upwards in a slight smile.
Suddenly she feels lighter than she did two minutes ago.
“I still have a coat, you know.” He’s helpless to laugh himself. “And you’re being beyond ridiculous right now. You do realize that right?”
“Too bad.” She says dismissively. She pats the spot on the bed next to her absently, her attention now on the screen. “Sit. Let’s just take a break from this and watch some TV.”
He looks at her in astonishment for a couple of seconds before he sighs, and obediently sinks back into the bed.
“Olivia, are you sure you’re not having some kind of stroke right now?” He asks, still feeling flabbergasted, and that was putting it mildly.
“I am fine.” She shrugs, a small smile still playing at the corner of her lips. “You can stay mad if you want, I’ll probably get mad again in another fifteen minutes. But let's just do it in the same place alright?”
“How will that help?” He asks curious about the sudden change in her mood.
“Just don’t go okay. I don’t want you to go.” She says softly, squeezing his shoulder. She moves closer to him, resting her head on his shoulder, as she keeps switching channels absently.
Still not understanding anything that was happening, he moves his arm around her anyway, allowing her to settle into his embrace, finding that his anger was dissipating rather easily as well.
“If I say yes, can I at least have my shirt back?” He grins at her.
“Hmm…no.” She shakes her head, her attention still on the screen, having landed on some 90s sitcom rerun she has deemed acceptable as a viewing choice.
“So what am I supposed to wear when we go out later exactly? Since you won’t let me leave your apartment.” He asks.
“I have some of your things here. I am sure you’ll find something that’ll do.”
“Why would you have my…” He stops himself then. “Right. Stupid question”
“Yeah.” She says, giving him a knowing look.
For a while they watch television in companionable silence, settling back under the covers, not saying much to each other.
“You kept my stuff?” He asks then. His arm is still around her, and he half-expects her to tense up at the question.
But she just shrugs flippantly. “Well, I briefly considered making a pile and setting it on fire. But that’s property damage you know, and I am a cop.” She shifts closer into his embrace, clearly signaling to him her comfort with all of this, with him in her home. “So yes, I kept your stuff. If you want something to wear right now, it's in the back, third drawer in the armoire.” She looks up at him then with a serious expression, holding up the collar of the shirt she’s wearing. “Because you’re not getting this back for sure.”
He laughs at that, knowing she was trying to make light of a potentially painful situation.
“I wouldn’t dream of it, especially when you look so downright scrumptious in it.” He kisses her on the slope of the nose, before he pulls her in for a kiss. “And thank you…for not setting my clothes on fire.”
Thank you for not giving up on me. Is what he means to say. He clears his throat then. “I’ll take them back with me tonight and get them out of your hair.”
“Why would you want to do that?” She says.
“Well because…” He says, unsurely, what he really wants to say. “It’s your apartment, I am sure you’d like your space back.”
I am sure you don’t want continued reminders of the time I spent in this place in your absence, he thinks, but again doesn’t say.
It’s bad enough that his muscle memory betrayed him so often and without even warning.
Like the fact that he knows how to work the hot and cold faucet levers of her shower to get exactly at the right level of heat and water pressure, or that he knows too intimately, the layout of her kitchen, including where she kept her breakfast tray, and even the temperamental nature of her ancient dishwasher. Or that he can work all the switches of her home without any prompting.
That he even knows the spots in the apartment where it can get especially drafty in the night.
Each one of these inadvertent displays of his knowledge has had her looking at him with a microsecond of surprise followed by intense anguish and then a placid acceptance, even a knowing smile, answering yet again for her a piece of the question she could never bring herself to ask out loud.
Like just how closely he had become woven into the fabric of her home life when he had thought he had been with her. Enough to know all these things. And each time it had made him feel terrible that there was no real way for him to unlearn these things.
“Leave it be. And when you head back to your place on Monday evening , after work, she says emphatically, “you should bring back more things you need, so you don’t keep whining about your one shirt.”
“Here?” He raises a questioning eyebrow at her. “You want me to keep my things here.”
“Is that a problem for you?” She asks, watching him with some curiosity, feeling a slight trepidation rise in her again. She resists the urge to remind him it's not exactly new to him, having found his possessions in relative abundance all around her apartment when she’d come back from over there.
In some (not so) small, petty (only a little) way, even if she won’t admit to herself, Olivia knows she’s trying to one-up that relationship, the one he’d shared not with her so much as some idea of her.
She feels an overbearing desire to displace, overwrite those old intimacies with new ones, ones they could share together. Ones which would be real, untainted and which would belong to only her without reservation, or apology, or shame and regret.
Because she wants him, this alluring version of him he had become in those weeks when he had imagined himself with her. The one who had charmed and wooed and loved her in all these new and extraordinarily delightful ways, the hints of which she was already seeing bleed through in his changed behavior and interactions with her, just in a few short days.
And surprisingly she wants her too, the person she had only a short while ago despised and thought bitterly as being the impossible standard she was being compared to.
Not the other, but the Olivia Peter had believed was transformed by their relationship. Because the truth is, she realizes, he was bringing out those changes in her. Her smile had been easier, sappier, if she was being honest with herself in the last few days and there was a lightness in her she couldn’t quite contain, an openness to being vulnerable, to being happy, to feeling promise and hope and joy in a way that she had forgotten to.
And beyond anything else, she wants them, these two people they always had the promise of becoming with each other. Because while the knowledge of what he has already experienced is impossible to undo, and has caused her a world of pain that she cannot ever really wish away, it’s ultimately almost seductive, the promise of them.
She wants to be the one doing the crossword in bed with him over a morning cup of coffee, laughing at his jokes, the one who gets to fall asleep in his arms in the blue light of still on late night television, the one who can keep his stuff in her drawer and sleep in his shirt, enveloped in his comforting scent.
And she wants to get there with him, like yesterday.
Which is why his obvious hesitance is worrying, to say the least.
“Not really.” He says cautiously, knowing her heckles were rising all over again. He gives himself a few seconds to think through what he wants to say, bracing himself for a bad response regardless. He brings her hand once again to her face, giving her a soft smile.
“Look Olivia, I know we’re not on a typical relationship trajectory here. But we’ve also had only one week together so far. What you’re suggesting, those are things people do pretty down the line you know?”
Predictably, she purses her lips at him unhappily, digesting his words.
“It's not because I don’t want to. Please, you have to believe me. It would be a dream come true. Because you’re right about us, being end game and all that. At least I am hoping we will be and I don’t screw it up for us.” He tells her gently.
“But you have to understand, I’ve never done this before. A serious relationship is not really part of my life experience. I don’t know any of the cues and I am just really afraid of messing this up with you, the chances of which are pretty high if we rush into things just because we’re all caught up in the moment. I don’t want us to be unprepared for the consequences when something goes wrong.”
She continues to look at him with a grim expression before getting up. She walks towards the closed window, before she turns and crosses her arms around herself tightly, trying to assert some authority.
“Can I ask you something Peter?” She says then.
“Yeah.” He nods.
“How many days like this do you think we’ll get to have? How much time do you think we really have?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we just averted a vortex opening up in the biggest city in the world a few days ago.” She says bluntly. “Everyday, no matter what we do, we get a little closer to this world possibly collapsing on us. There’s also your face on the instruction manual of a doomsday machine in case you have forgotten that little fact.” She says then, her expression almost unreadable, voice deceptively neutral.
She’s trying to hide rather ineffectively behind her ‘agent’ persona. But dressed only in that outsized shirt of his that’s almost falling off her shoulders and comes to only a little below her panties, she looks smaller somehow, rendered vulnerable.
And scared. Blatantly scared.
She runs her hands over her face now, calming herself in a self-soothing gesture, before bringing it to her hips.
“Do you have any idea how terrified I have been since that day at the hanger, when I saw what that thing did to you? Do you know what I dream about every night? If you want a hint, they all end with you dead, in horrifying ways.”
“I know it's worrying Olivia.” He says, giving her a small smile. “But we don’t really fully understand the machine or anything about it. We shouldn’t assume the worst without knowing everything.”
“It's us Peter.” She says in a defeated sigh. “There’s no other way this plays out. You should know that by now.”
She smiles at him then. “You were right about the two of us, you know. It’s beautiful. It’s beyond anything I imagined.”
She hadn’t expected it to go so smoothly, for everything to fall into place like it was the most natural thing in the world.
After the sheer hell she’s been put through, she didn’t expect the payout to be this boundless.
But he fits with her, so perfectly. The way he folds into her life and her home like he has been there all along, taking up just the right amount of space without even being disruptive and yet in a way that renders everything touched by him.
In a way that makes her forget what it was like before.
“I have already spent months alone, months when I could have been with you, when I should have been with you.” She says, failing to keep the desperation out of her voice.
“But no, we had to wait until what, the end of the world is upon us to look past our collective stupidity and decide we could give ourselves permission to be with each other. So please tell me, what terrible consequences could outweigh what we’ve already done to ourselves. What is worse than having to live every second with the knowledge that there will be a day when I have to lose you to that thing.”
She looks at him like she’s daring him to counter her, before she speaks again. “You want to slow down because you’re afraid we’ll mess up our future by moving too fast? I am scared that if we don’t move fast enough, we won’t even get to have one. That this occasional weekend, when Broyles won’t call us in after all, will be all we ever get to have. You kept asking me what’s been bothering me. It's this. This is what’s making me angry, because I think we deserve better don't you?”
She hugs herself tighter in that moment, turning away from him, afraid she would start crying in that very second if she held his gaze any longer.
“I just want us to have a real shot Peter, and it hurts so much to know that we won’t really get to.”
It's less than a minute before he’s behind her, encircling his arms around her in a firm, warm embrace. His head finds the nook of her neck and he lays it to rest there after he places a comforting kiss on the spot.
“Hmm...” He’s nodding. “Well, unless the cortexiphan has given you some new power to see into the future that you haven’t clued me into, or you’re secretly an observer, you can’t possibly know anything like that.”
She manages a weak laugh at that, grateful yet again for the lightness he never fails to inject into their everyday, taking away the power from the weight of everything that bears on them day in, day out.
He turns her around then, still holding her in his embrace, grinning at her, but eyes betraying that sincerity that is his hallmark.
“Can I just state for the record, in terms of the whole girlfriend experience, if you’re looking for feedback that is...that the past hour has been straight up terrifying.”
She laughs, nodding in agreement as it dawns on her how just how her emotional see-sawing must be playing out in Peter’s perspective.
No wonder he was trying to run to the hills a while ago.
She smiles a bit sheepishly, shrugging then. “Well you wanted vulnerable Olivia, you got her. And no surprise, she’s not pretty.”
“On the contrary, she’s extremely pretty.” He laughs, nudges her nose playfully. “I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this but I’ve always found you unbelievably hot when you get mad. Your eyes go wild, all that color in your cheeks. But usually, I am not so scared out of mind as well, given that you’re mad at something or someone else and not me. So that’s new for me. I am still figuring out what the fine line between being totally turned on and reckoning with unparalleled terror is. But I think there are some interesting possibilities there that we should explore later for sure.” He says wryly, giving her a cheeky smile before he continues.
“Now what vulnerable Olivia is though, is undeniably certifiable. Because you are you know. There’s no other way to put it.” He brings his hands to either side of her face, chuckling. “You could give Walter a run for his money with the top notch vacillating and the general craziness you’ve brought to the table today.”
She raises an eyebrow at him, still smiling too widely for someone being described in such unflattering terms.
“So it occurs to me…” He says then in his ‘ boy am I going to top this ’ voice, “that the only way to counter this new and improved, insane version of you is to bring some crazy to the table myself.”
“I am listening.” She says curiously.
“You want to skip forward?” He says, his voice turning into something of a dare as he speaks now. “Let's do it.”
“Meaning what exactly?” Her eyes widen, as she registers the reckless undercurrent of his voice, shivering almost a little in anticipation.
“You tell me, Olivia.” He’s smiling now knowingly. “Long weekend to the Cape? A week in Maui? A month in Europe? Buying plants together? Getting a dog? Me with all my stuff, packed and at your doorstep in an hour’s time? Two seats on the earliest flight out of Logan to Vegas and the first chapel we can find there with an open booking? Open houses, escrow, mortgage, joint checking accounts, joint taxes? His and hers sinks? Matching robes? Minivans? Throwing away all the contraceptives we have on us and making a baby right this moment, twins, triplets, more kids than the Von Trapp family.”
“Peter..” Her eyes shoot up in alarm.
“Just tell me when to stop.” He winks at her, still grinning like a poker player with a very winning hand. “I will do anything and everything. Anything you want, however far you want to go, I’ll go there with you, right this moment.”
“You will?” She asks in genuine astonishment, knowing he wasn’t actually joking at all.
“Absolutely.” He nods, his eyes unwavering in their certainty. “Scratch the dog though, I am actually allergic and we’d need some intervention by Walter. But everything else is up for grabs. Just say the words and it’s done. So, what do you want, Olivia?”
“Whatever I want?” She swallows hard, as she seriously thinks through what he was offering her.
“Is that a problem for you?” He asks, mirroring her questioning from earlier.
The ‘more’ in their relationship that she hasn’t ever been able to visualize for fear of losing the precious little they do get to have, like this day, this moment when she can see the promise of this future through his eyes.
“What I want is that date tonight.” She nearly breathes out her words, as the feeling overwhelms her in that second.
“Only that?” He teases her, his expression a mocking parody of what she’d worn just a while ago. “Is this just a casual fling for you? I just offered you a lifetime – trips, plants, pets, kids, houses, joint finances, and you want to set us back by so many years. Think of all the time we’re losing.” He emphasizes, his grin getting wider and cockier.
“Shut up. You sure talk a big game for a man who was afraid to keep a couple of clothes in my bedroom like five minutes ago.” She rolls her eyes at him. “And I didn’t say I was done.” She moves closer into his embrace then, closing her eyes, she burrows into him.
”What I want right now, what I really want is for you to promise me we’ll get to have all the rest of that stuff -- trips, plants, pets, kids, houses...though I'll wait on the joint finances till I check your credit score.” She meets his eyes then, letting him see the full depth of her fear.
“And I want you to promise me I won’t lose you.”
He rests his forehead against hers. “Why couldn’t you have just picked Maui, Olivia?” He jokes, though his voice is no longer mocking, just slightly defeated.
“You said I could have anything I want.” She smiles defiantly at him, returning his dare. “Well, I pick you.”
“Well that’s easy. So easy that I feel bad for you. Because you have me, as long as you want me, you have me.” He nods.
“Peter…”
“I promise you won’t lose me, Olivia.” He says firmly then, his eyes intense, boring into hers in that moment. “I promise we will have our chance to do all of it. No matter what my fate is, what our world’s fate is, we’ll get our chance. That I promise you.”
“Good.” She nods decisively, laughing. “Glad we got that sorted.”
“Yeah it's easy. This relationship stuff. I wonder why people make such a big deal of it.” He laughs too. He bends down to kiss her then, not missing the way she trembles against his lips, the shiver that creeps up her spine.
He deepens the kiss in a bid to push away the lingering traces of that fear, absorbing the way she slowly relaxes in his hold, her body growing more pliant.
“More kids than the Von Trapp family?” She gives him a questioning look, as she suddenly pulls away from him briefly, remembering only then.
“Don’t talk in the middle of a kiss, it's rude, ‘Livia.” He shakes his head, pulling her back towards his lips.
“You actually thought that's something I would want?” She mumbles, laughing against his lips. “Seven kids?”
“More than seven. I said more than the Von Trapps.” He points out as he moves his lips down her jawline to her throat.
“You were actually going to be ready to father more than seven children with me if that's what I wanted Peter?”
“If that’s what you wanted. Yes.” He says seriously.
“You’re crazy.” She shakes her head.
“You’re crazy.” He points out. “Now how about we dial down the crazy at both our ends and resume our sexcapade? All this talking has made me miss those fun times we had. It was so long ago.” He says wistfully.
“Try an hour ago. Less than maybe.” She points out dryly. “And I am not resuming anything with you till you make us that reservation for tonight.”
“Don’t worry. I know a guy.” He shrugs. “Best table in the house at 7.00 like you asked, any place in the city you want to go.”
“How lazy are you?” She laughs “You know a guy, for something achieved through picking up a phone and making a call?”
“Well I’ll ask him to throw in some contraband caviar too if you’d like?” He chuckles, his hands sneaking down her back to her lower waist. “Coz he’s my guy for that too.”
She’s helpless to laugh then, in a way that makes her insides almost hurt, as she catches his teasing, unrelenting grin, thoughts of any doomsday wave sync machines flying from her mind.
Almost like that was not the reality she lived in. It was this.
“God, I am really going to regret this aren’t I?” She shakes her head ruefully. “Doing this with you?”
This was him, with her, in every which way she could have him.
Him, as long as she wanted.
Which was now, later and forever.
“Don’t blame me sweetheart.” He gives her a knowing smile, like he can almost read her mind, registering in her face the full remit of the deal she’d struck just then.
“You picked me.”