Bad Girls Have More Fun

Olivia comes stumbling home in the middle of the night, achingly tired but still somewhat amused. She's still kind of thrumming with this odd sensation of victory, as if she's won something or regained it; she had forgotten, really, just how much she had genuinely liked the other Walter. Despite herself, she wants an excuse to visit again—she's starting to feel oddly fond of her alternate self, and their Astrid, and—

She stops at her doorway and scolds herself for that twisty rabbit-hole thought process. They can't be her family, or a part of her family; no matter that she has this distant tug inside of her, urging her to win her alternate self over, because in some roundabout way it feels like she's the rebellious younger sibling, trying to get back into the faithful older sister's good graces. Some part of her wishes that Lincoln had come along, too; she knows that he likes all of them, and that—even though he'd never admit—he's as fond of his alternate as Olivia is of hers.

The door is locked, and she fumbles a bit with the key before successfully letting herself in; she drops her things on her couch with a mild sigh, unzipping her jacket and discarding it on the coffee table. There is a thing like want or hunger in her, too innocent to be like lust, and it wants what she's apparently determined to drive away from herself: those people, the ones from the other side. And she knows it's ridiculous, because once all of this is done—Jones and the fact that their worlds are cracking apart—she will never see any of them again.

And, honestly, a tiny little part of her is sad for it.

There's a stirring from the kitchen, and she realizes with a belated click in her mind that the light is on. She can hear someone dropping ice cubes into a glass, shuffling around on the tile with bare feet; despite herself, despite her fatigue and her muddled thoughts, an enormous grin breaks out across her face.

"Liv?" calls out a voice, thick with exhaustion but pleased nonetheless. And then there's Lincoln, eyes bleary and hair ruffled, wearing only a t-shirt and his trademark cargo pants; it looks like he's been sleeping, probably on her couch, because she can see a copy of Douglas Adam's The Salmon of Doubt, the third in the Dirk Gently tetralogy, resting upside on her sofa cushion.

"I didn't think you'd still be here," she admits, wanting to instinctively cross the room towards him but holding herself back.

He grins at her, eyes bright and awake all of the sudden, drinking her in, like even though it's only been a day he's missed her desperately. "You said to wait here when I got off, until you got home."

She pauses for a moment, biting her lip and making a face and grinning stupidly at him, because for some reason she just can't stop doing that. Honestly, she's so used to Frank's ridiculous schedule—him being gone all the time, running out to go save people an ocean away—that she'd been running on default, expecting to crawl home into an empty bed. And she can't fault Frank for his heroism—it's why she wanted him in the first place, after all, because even though she's such a bad girl she just wants a boy with a gun who knows the difference between right and wrong—but she has to admit that it's so much better when the hero you're lusting after is content with saving the people in his immediate vicinity instead of a thousand miles away.

"I didn't tell her," she says after a minute, biting on her thumb and shifting her weight from one foot to the other. "Their Olivia, I mean—about us. I was going to, I mean, oh God I was going to tease her endlessly about it…Especially because it's her Lincoln's fault that this happened anyway." She gestures between them, smirking a little when she says "fault" so that he knows she's only making fun. "But you should see the way she looks at that Peter Bishop, and then she turns around and tells me that he's just my type."

Lincoln raises his eyebrows. "And what did you say?"

"That it turns out I have thing for nice guys," she replies, and he mock-flinches.

"Nice is the word of doom," he informs her, but by then she's moving across the room and wrapping her arms around his waist, leaning back so that she can look into his eyes. "I mean it—you couldn't have said, like, rugged or handsome or—"

Olivia kisses him then, mostly just to shut him up. Or at least, that's what she tells herself—it certainly has nothing to do with the way that he feels against her, all hard, wiry muscle, lean like a wolf. She likes it better than Frank's bulk; Lincoln feels rangy and wild against her, more like an actual soldier than the buff actors they get to play them in the movies, and she likes it.

"Was it fun?" asks Lincoln finally, pulling away from her; his eyes dance, amused because he knows that she knows that this is his way of teasing her. She thinks it's because she made him wait so long—he stops sometimes, when she's losing herself in the slide of his skin against hers, the tight pull of his muscles, to torture just a little bit, punish her with a few delayed seconds in return for the years he's spent waiting.

For one long moment, she's not sure how to respond; it's Lincoln, which means she can either make a joke or say something completely seriously. And it's a new feeling, she'll admit, because she was never completely serious with Frank—for one thing, she couldn't be, because so much of her work is classified, but also they just weren't like that. There was always something too light-hearted about the way they treated each other, which is a stark contrast to the way that Lincoln looks at her: half-mirth but half something that she doesn't quite understand.

"Their Walter is so much more fun," she admits finally, giving him a tiny smile. "It was so much fun. We need more excuses to go over there. They have coffee all the time in the lab there, and their Astrid is—"

It should feel so very novel to be telling someone about her day like this—she could never tell Frank any of this, and generally Lincoln was either there or she's already told him—but really it just sort of feels like coming home.

A/N: All I have to say is this: she better have been talking about Lincoln. Also, this episode definitely reminded of why I actually started liking Fauxlivia last season: I think she is, at heart, a good person, just more self-absorbed and self-righteous than she ought to be. I loved her little exchange with Walter at the end of this episode; I want her and the rest of the alt!gang to just come over and hang out on our side ALL THE TIME. As a side note, can I just say how completely in love I am with alt!Astrid?