A/N: I've been stuck on the breakfast scene for days, and after thinking about it, it's the TRAY that I'm stuck on, because it's the existence of that tray in Olivia's apartment that is waving my characterization of her into my face and laughing because I've basically had her all wrong. This is embarrassing, because I've been writing her with some confidence for months. So pardon my three upcoming short!fics about this scene: it's therapy :)

Okay. So maybe he didn't know her like he thought he did.

He'd always thought of her as being contentedly weird, a little different. Not in a bad way, but in a way he understood by being a little different himself.

Since they'd started this thing between them in earnest, she'd been surprising him every day. For example: he wouldn't have thought to take her somewhere fancy, but he'd asked and she'd named that place with the leather booths and wine glasses that refilled themselves like magic. He wouldn't have thought to do a lot of things that she seemed to enjoy. He would have taped up a panel from a secondhand graphic novel with a blonde-haired heroine kicking ass on her bathroom mirror, but she seemed more appreciative of red roses appearing on her kitchen table at the end of the day.

On this morning, he was in her kitchen ready to dial-a-diner for a sack of hashbrowns to go with the rocket fuel he was brewing in her coffee pot, when he saw it: a breakfast-in-bed tray on top of her fridge. Not just a multipurpose cakes-to-turkeys tray: a tray with no other purpose, with four little legs and handles on top.

It confused him. Never in a million years would he have pegged her for someone who had the time and patience for breakfast in bed, let alone the interest. She'd been a coffee-on-the-way-to-wherever kind of person for as long as he'd known her. He had to take the tray down, just to see if there were any coffee rings. There were several.

It had to have been John. His gift. His idea. Maybe he'd bought it because he'd assumed breakfast in bed was the universal signifier for a romantic boyfriend. Or maybe Olivia'd asked for it because at some point in the past she'd been a person who liked to relax. There weren't two trays, so it wasn't like they'd spent their weekend mornings with their knees under eggs and french toast. And from what he remembered, their thing was more clandestine than domestic, but he could have been wrong about that, too.

Peter set the tray on her kitchen table. It was possible that since John had gone, Olivia had forgotten that she enjoyed banal romantic semaphore. It was possible that, since Peter'd only really known her after John had gone, maybe the Olivia Dunham that he thought he knew was Olivia Dunham, depressed and grieving. It was possible she was just getting happy again.

That thought alone disappointed him. He didn't want to be disappointed by something that was clearly good for her, but the way she'd used to be had been good for him. It'd been a nice experience, being able to call someone at three in the morning who wasn't your loan shark but who'd be awake and willing to talk just the same. It'd been nice to know someone who felt as haunted as he did sometimes. It'd been nice not to feel so unique, for once.

Peter hesitated, his hand on the refrigerator door. He could serve something up on that tray. It would be delicious and perfectly arranged and it would telegraph "romance," even if it wouldn't be the way he'd prefer to show it. He had the feeling she wouldn't care, or even notice. Or worse: she'd start thinking that this was just how he was, in love. Ordinary. Predictable. Traditional.

He'd always thought of himself as more of a rebel.

He sighed and jerked the door open, plucking eggs from the egg tray. He knew that everyone made sacrifices for something. In his case, on this morning, it would be for someone. All things told, it wasn't a big sacrifice: it was 5 minutes cooking eggs and making toast and a fancy dinner now and again. He was good enough with words that he could even throw in some cheesy lines almost as an afterthought. If that were the only cost of being with her, he'd consider it a bargain.

Someday he'd get bored with it, bored with himself, and would need to ditch the traditional for the instinctual, the breakfast tray for diner coffee, but not yet. Their now was easy and fun, and that would be fine, until it wasn't.