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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"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?"

"FBI?"

Turns out Olivia is really good at pulling off the askance look.

"Uh, no. DoD. The FBI folded almost ten years ago."

Seriously, where has this guy been? Did he get stranded on the moon? (Not that that'd explain it -- she knows they get TV reception up on the moon just as clearly as they get it in New York.)

"Ten--"

He sits back in his chair; makes himself sit back in his chair, thinking furiously and hoping it doesn't show on his face even as he goes with gut instinct.

"I don't get what's going on here."

And that has the ring of absolute truth.

"Yeah, me neither."

Still light. Still coupled with that sharp, scrutinizing look that he's occasionally seen on the other Olivia's face.

"How do you know me, Jim?"

"From here," he says, as the waitrat returns with their drinks and squeaks for attention.

"We met here. Which you clearly don't remember."

A beat. For a second, Olivia's face is oddly blank.

And then she smiles -- it's a whole lot sharper this time, much more humorless -- and says, "Let me guess. Blonde hair?"

He accepts the drinks and sets them both on the table, but doesn't look away from her.

"Yes." A beat. "That means something?"

"How many times have you see her here?"

For now, she ignores Jim's question as she pulls her tea close to her.

"A few," he says, quietly. "Why?"

"We met pretty recently."

The sharp, humorless smile hasn't faded.

"Kind of surprised you thought we were the same person."

"Except for the hair and the clothes, you look a lot like her," he points out. "You have the same name. You work for Fringe Division."

Bucky himself is a lot more tense than he was a few seconds ago. The last time he'd seen Olivia smile like that--

Beat.

"What do you mean, you met?"

"She's from the universe next door to mine," says Olivia. "She ripped a hole in my world trying to get over here."

Just one more of many caused by the people Over There.

"She wouldn't do that."

Instant and certain.