Disclaimer: Not my characters. But I sure like playing with 'em.

Spoilers: Season 4, and especially 4x18.

Author's note: This is a mid-episode ficlet. As much as I enjoyed "The Consultant", I had a hankering for more P/O love. This was to help satisfy my craving. Wrote it on my lunch hour. (Under 3,000 words? Say it isn't so!)

Dedication: To all of my readers, thanks for feeding into my addiction. Especially my girl, Elialys, thanks for sticking by me, honey. You know what I do is for you. ;) As always, reviews are like candy and they satiate my muse.

He's standing against the car when she makes her way across the lot.

His hands are tucked in his pockets, and his attention's on the place his feet are scuffing black ground; his boot the concenter of a focus that's dropped his shoulders in sad weight.

It's a despondence that creeps up her back, a pensive gloom that's crawled its way from his body to dig into her bones.

This is the brunt of the apprehension she left him in, the hesitation he'd felt when he'd said goodbye to his father with a pack of Red Vines and a hug.

On the outside, he supports his father's need for self-sufficience, but she's felt this under-current of worry, this fear, since leading an eager Walter into the Bridge room and through the doorway of an Alter-verse.

They may not have the same history now, these men, as in the time-line that holds the thirty two years of their past life, but the same familial affection beats here, so hard, it's re-invented a love that once changed an egotistical boy into an unselfish man.

Even here, in this new circumstance, all the ways that man's matured, all the re-kindled memories she holds of how he was and how he is, of what they've done together and became to each other, beautify him completely in the past she got back.

This world is different but none of it matters. Because under all this new chaos, they share the keystone of secret reflection, moments bred in a time-line when she fell for his eminence and he fell for the declaration left in the taste of her kiss.

He fell for the idea of somewhere to belong.

It was family then, that grounded the roots he never wanted to put down. And it's those same roots that accrued his existence here, into this world they know now, and that binding reason continues to flow through to his core with the promise of home.

It's why he's so downbeat now, in his cheerless stance. As much as he loves her, as much as he needs her, she's only one half of the unit his heart's span calls out for.

And the other fraction is, right now, as she comes to stand beside him, stepping into a territory filled with dangers unknown.

There's more then one trace of liberty here, on the base of this island. It's not only the Green Lady's shadow of independence that's shading the high arcs of his face.

It's his father's too.

And so she reaches out to him, pushes into his morose with her hand against his elbow. And in response, he looks up at her, his concern a gray unease she feels flow through to her fingertips.

"Hey," she says, her voice as soft as the line that's crowning his brow, "he's going to be okay, Peter. Walter's going to be fine."

For quiet seconds he looks into her, and she knows he's searching for the comfort he finds when they do this, when she smudges out the worry lines on his face with the soothe of her words, but this time it's only a short breath that escapes his lips, a chuckle void of humor that shakes his body with wavering faith.

And when he shifts, he flexes on his toes, turns his eyes to the side, attempts to steel his composure by willing back his distress.

This personal struggle she's seen too many times; when he's persuading his doubt to believe, despite the dire possibilities, that she's most probably right.

To help, she rubs her hand down his arm, inches closer until she's almost tucked under his chin, into the force of his scent and his warmth.

"She cares for him, the other me." she tells him, remembering the look of affection, months ago, on a face like her own as it took in his father, when she accepted for the first time, that adoration couldn't be a trait of the menacing but the equally soft-hearted.

Despite their past enmity, she's willing to believe her other knows things like sympathy and compassion. She hears it in the fondness she attributes to an addled old man's name.

"And Lincoln's there," She says to Peter, as she feels his body start to slack, "he'll make sure that whatever happens, Walter's careful."

A deep exhalation, is his response to this, a blow of the air he's been holding while her touch and her words chipped away at his tension.

"Peter, we both know Walter needs this."

She says finally, and his mouth forms into a tight line, and then slowly, he nods his head, a tell of the reality her perspective has granted his own.

And when he searches her face again, he finds the anchor she's offered him, his eyes a gratitude of her comfort that's pulled the pale-blue from the sky.

"I know you're right," he says, then shrugs a shoulder, "but it doesn't mean I don't wish I was over there with him."

His words are a little sad, a little based in the kind of devotion he holds to his father, but there's a small smile that's cracked through the somber poise of his face; a force of an acceptance he's allowed his solicitude.

And understanding, her fingers find the length of his, and when she entwines them, she pushes her body into his, melting what muscles he'd tightened into every inch of her own.

"Well..." she says, feeling her body react in the cradle of his, "you're going to have to be okay with being stuck here with me."

A new kind of air envelops him, as his lashes fan down to half-mast, a new focus of his concentration that's turned his want to desire, her attention to the pulsing urge that's shot, suddenly, to the place that always warms when he looks at her this way.

As she'd intended, she's caught him up in this pleasant distraction.

And so his hand finds her neck, as his smile grows dangerous, a slight curve of his mouth that provokes his other hand to find the curve of her hip. And in an instant he turns them both, knocks her breath away when she's backed into the hard metal of the car, her spine digging into the car's body as his presses, heavily, into her.

"I can find some way to deal with it."

He whispers, his eyes on her lips, obsidian fusing a darker lust into the gaze that's arched her lower half into his. And in another time maybe, she'd have been bothered by this public display on government grounds, but right now all she knows is the fire teeming under her skin, the uncontrollable heat that's sparked her veins so hot, she can feel every cell in her blood.

And as she gives into delirium, his mouth crushes hers, paunching her lips with a fever that's leaving them raw, swollen from the honey she tastes on his tongue. And she groans into the kiss, as his ardor pushes her harder into the car, a glorious pain of an incitement that starts to anesthetize every inch of her skin.

And it's when his pocket starts to vibrate, that his teeth scrape her bottom lip, and both are a thrill so exciting, they hitch her breath, ache what over- sensitized parts are throbbing under him already. And so she fists his coat under her fingers, in the aftermath of interruption, biting back the urge to devour, to abandon logic and reason and just take what she craves.

And he's doing the same now, his face buried in the crook of her neck, the quiet shrill of his phone pulsing itself through their heavy breath and bare nerves.

Robbed of this moment, he swears against her skin, a curse betrayed by the smile that's carving its way into her collarbone, and frustrated, defeated, she sighs, reaches into his jacket because he's too numb to move.

And when she pulls out the small nuisance, he groans, braces his hands on the window behind her, tries to tamper down his excitement while she drags open the lock on his phone's front screen.

"The ugh, bodies have arrived at the lab." she reports resignedly, after she's opened the text from Astrid, and in response he chuckles audibly, picks himself up and steals away from her his sweet heat.

"And not a moment too soon." he deadpans, his voice hoarse from past ravage, then he plucks up the phone she's holding out to him.

And when he puts distance between them, she instantly despises it.

The mood changes now, when he clears his throat, the air no longer sparking under her fingers, but cold with a polarity he's tuned to neutrality. And as he replies to the message, she absently straightens her scarf, her collar, her blouse, wondering how in the hell he'd managed to untuck her shirt in the confines of her coat.

It wouldn't be the first time he's used misdirection to unbury her skin, his fingers ghosting off her clothes while she'd been deliciously enthralled by the velvet of his mouth. Flushed by the thought, she feels her cheeks grow hot, and as she ducks her head, her vision wonders to the command post in the distance.

And suddenly she's so self-conscious, her body's grown heavy from the weight of her jacket.

"Ugh, Peter," she says, softly, and when he responds with a "hmm?", she points to the gated turret, "we have an audience."

This peaks his brow in silent question, and when he follows the end of her finger, she sees his chest hitch in a breath of amusement. Caught inside his window, the young cadet averts his eyes, burying his sudden shame of being seen under the rim of his beret.

"Too bad he won't be getting the whole show."

Peter quips, and surprising herself, she snorts at this, his humor replacing what embarrassment she'd felt a second before. And when he turns back to her, his joke curls up the corner of his mouth.

"Bet he wants his money back."

All she can do is grin at this, contented now in the easy air he's created, and when he faces the gate again, he waves toyingly, conceitedly, proudly, at the uniformed solider.

And she hides her eyes from it, veiling her face with the cover of her palm, embarrassed for them both from his childlike antics.

"Good god,"she says, and when she drops her hand it's an over-dramatized sigh, "you can be such a smart-ass sometimes."

She wants to play sarcastic, seem annoyed, but her small smile is betraying any serious rouse.

"Sounds like me."

He says, with a smug smirk, and it's elicited a sparkle in the gray-heather of his eyes.

Thoroughly pleased with himself, he turns his attention back to his phone, begins to walk around the car, blindly, as he hits digits on the keypad.

And recognizing the parting cue, she tries not to still feel a little displeased, a little too unsatisfied by her humming-from-him nerve ends. So she swallows back her selfishness as she opens up the passenger-side door.

"Tell you what..." she hears him say, and when she peers over the car's roof, the sparkle in his irises are a blue shade brighter, "I'll do the autopsies if you do that thing I like with your mouth later."

Always, he thinks he's funny when he makes her blush, gets some kind of personal enjoyment out of seeing her flustered. Especially when they're out in the field.

She'd try to seem unphased by the intimate mention now, if he wasn't so thrilled by the red in her face.

"You have no shame do you?"

She says simply, holding back the amusement that threatens to pull at her cheeks.

"Nope," he says, with the same smug smirk she saw before. Then he points to her side of the car, "and judging by what just happened, neither do you."

And as he climbs into the cabin, she dips her head on his words.

She'd had limitations once, propriety, but he'd destructed that boundary with the freedom given in the whisper of his touch, the wet of his kiss.

Dignified or not, her breath is intrinsic on the last notes of his.

And she can't say she doesn't, if secretly, enjoy the hell out of it.

So when she's claimed her seat in the car, after he's begun their drive and she's absently flipping through their case file, she decides to reciprocate him in kind.

"How long is later?"

She asks, drawing out the last syllable, and when she looks over at him, she purposely bites her lip, raises her brow in teasing expression.

And when he glances at her, she can tell she's caught him off guard, but instead of a slight flush, it's a quick fascination that falls over his features.

"If you keep looking at me like that, not long at all."

Inwardly, this makes her smile, but she draws her full attention and her guise, back to the dossier.

"Too bad there's bodies to dissect," she says, pointedly direct, "a case to solve, people to save..."

He shifts beside her, and she begins to feel his quiet aggravation. Despite his work-related ambition, his still- humming nerves aren't too happy about priority either.

"Keep it up," he says, "and I won't do that thing you like with my mouth later."

But she knows, and he'll prove it later, after they've shed their work-front and resistance and clothes, that he'd never be able to hold such a bluff.

Like she, he's too blissfully determined to make up for lost time.

And in the only way he's able, he knows her best, because he's right; she does, really, really like what he can do with that mouth.