milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Well.

This is...unexpected.

This isn't anything like good, either, judging by Olivia's expression: an open mix of wariness and curiosity she makes no effort to hide. She glances over her shoulder to look at her apartment, turns back to the bar, then takes a slow step over the threshold. Brushing red hair aside, she touches a thick black cuff on her left ear.

"Fringe, this is Dunham," she says, low.

No response. Olivia looks up, tapping the cuff a little harder. "Fringe, come in."

Nothing.

"Shit," she mutters, and immediately drops her hand to a small aerosol can at her belt. At least she's already dressed, wearing her usual form-fitting leather clothes that reveal a slash of red fabric at her chest, and not, say, walking around the apartment in her underwear. Even better than a breach right outside her door? Would be facing that breach in nothing but a bra.

[ooc: mun is still pretty wiped from the election last night, so slowtimes may occur without warning. post is open until I say it's not!]

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At a table nearby, Bucky glances up from his beer upon hearing a familiar voice.

Half a second later, he's straightened up fully, and is giving her a look that's half-started, half extremely appreciative.

"That's a new look for you, Agent Dunham. Working a case?"

She turns instantly at Agent Dunham.

...Well, hey there, cutie.

Business first, though: her smile is broader than it's been in the past, but it's still completely professional -- and, most telling, there's no recognition to it. "Looks like it," she says. "Sir, if you could stay back there a little longer -- "

Olivia depresses a button on the canister and sweeps it back and forth in the air. A fine mist radiates from the end; she studies it closely as it dissipates into nothing, then unhooks another tool that looks a bit like a pocket-sized blacklight.

Sir?

Surprise flickers clearly in his expression, but he stays where he is, watching with interest.

The light clicks on, radiating a neon-like purple glow. Following the path of the aerosol, Olivia waves it back and forth through the air.

Nothing seems to happen, though -- if you're paying close attention -- the air does shimmer weakly in one or two spots, a prismatic glimmer like a soap bubble.

Clearly, this wasn't the result she expected. Olivia's brow knits. "Huh," she mutters as she turns off the light. "Lucky us."

His eyes narrow.

"Was there some reason we might not have been?" Thinking back to a previous conversation, he adds,

"Did all that Slender Man stuff destabilize the place?"

"The what stuff?"

She tilts her head, plainly interested.

... something's wrong. He doesn't know what, he doesn't know how, but something's wrong.

There's no way Olivia would have forgotten that. Not unless something happened to her during it, and surely Steve would have heard if so, surely--

Bucky ignores the twist in his gut and uses the rush of adrenaline instead to sharpen his focus the way he does when he's looking to lock a target in his sights.

"You know, all those problems with the faceless guy from that Internet meme," he says, easily enough for someone who'd learned the terms just recently. "Sure was a shock to find out something like that could cross over and become real."

She wrinkles her nose a little, still smiling. "That happen a lot around here?"

Everything about Olivia's stance reads casual -- far more casual than Bucky's ever seen her, like she's no longer tensed under a weight -- but the look she's giving him is a lot sharper all of a sudden.

He makes a disgruntled noise.

"I hope not. Once was plenty."

"You see anything else weird? Even little things?"

Strapping the light back in place, she makes her way over to his table.

"There's plenty of weird here to go around," he replies, "or my name's not Jim Barnes."

Bucky pulls out a chair for her and gives her an engaging smile.

"Can I buy you a drink while we talk about it?"

Oh, and a gentleman, too. Olivia might be happily engaged, but she never said no to a little harmless flirting; her grin brightens as she says, "If that's the way your heart goes, Mr. Barnes."

She settles into the proffered chair.

"Think I could get a tea? It is way too early to be doing a solo degradation check without caffeine."

"Make it Jim," he says, keeping his smile just as warm as before, even as hope sinks.

No reaction to the difference in his name, and "Mister," not "Sergeant." That clinches it. Something is very wrong here, and he's got to figure out what.

It can't be the Slender Man - Olivia was on their side. Is it that time's done something weird, like how Doyle comes in from ahead of him and Steve, and this is her first time in? No, or she'd have known him from before when he first met her, wouldn't she?

"I think that can be arranged." He flags down the nearest passing waitrat. "Tea for the lady, and coffee for me," he tells it.

"Is that what you were doing before?"

"Coffee, huh?" Amused. "Somebody's a high roller."

She doesn't sound like she's teasing him, either. God, that this place serves coffee at all is impressive enough.

"Yeah, that's part of our standard check during big Fringe events." In the faint sing-song of a well-rehearsed mantra: "If the air shines red, you're pretty much dead."

The rat scurries off; Olivia glances down, and visibly pauses as she watches it go.

"Easier to get here than back home," he tells her, and follows her glance. "They take some getting used to, don't they?"

Bucky's thinking furiously, trying to remember everything Olivia had ever told him about her work before. He knows for damn sure coffee hadn't been a shock to her, which means... what?

"The division I work for covers some more eclectic cases. Including ones that involve other universes...I had some experience with the matter before I found the bar."

Recalling one particular phrase, he asks, casually,

"Red means a 'soft spot,' I take it?"

"Liiiittle more severe than that," she says with a wry laugh. "By the time you're hitting red, it's more like a Class One Event that's got a fifty-fifty shot of being quarantined. So." She shrugs. "At least whatever this is isn't going to put a new rip in the universe."

"At least there's that," he agrees. "That happen to you guys a lot?"

She lifts one eyebrow in a perfect arch.

"It happens to everybody a lot," she says. "What, you from out of town?"

Olivia's heard of a couple isolated patches in Midland that haven't had a major event in years. It's all rumor, but hey, maybe there's some truth to it.

"Brooklyn's not exactly out of town, last I checked."

His smile is warm and charming.

"Come on," he teases, "you know you guys inside Fringe Division know more about that sort of thing than most people do."

"Yeah, but -- "

She's laughing a little with incredulity.

"I know the Orpheum made the news over there. You guys have got a new chunk of amber right in the middle of your neighborhood."

Amber. He's got no idea what she's talking about, but makes a mental note of the term anyway.

"Yeah, well, since when did you trust the news to tell the absolute truth?"

"If you don't trust the news, you can trust me." Her smile's a little tenser now. "I was there when they put the protocol in effect."

And trying to get inside, trying to get home --

Yeah, apparently she's still going to get little blips of those short-circuited memories. It's okay. It's normal, the docs said, she's been through a lot and she might need a little more time to heal.

Doesn't mean it hasn't stopped bugging her.

"Hey."

Concern's visible now; Bucky leans forward a little.

"I trust you, Olivia. You know I've got reason to."

Beat.

"You okay?"

...She's pretty sure she didn't give him her first name. And --

Well, maybe he overheard Lee or Charlie call her Liv and extrapolated from there, but he doesn't seem to have any grasp of the deterioration despite living in Brooklyn, he didn't even hear about the breach at the Orpheum, so how --

(this is not my home)

"Yeah." She keeps it light, keeps the smile in place, even as she narrows her eyes. "I'm fine. Why've you got reason to trust me?"

Olivia's thinking of a woman with blonde hair and no bangs, pointing a
gun at her and saying, You've got to trust me. I'm you.

Edited 2012-11-15 04:18 (UTC)

He counters her question with a question of his own.

"You are Agent Olivia Dunham of the FBI's Fringe Division, right?"