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Olivia has told him a little of what happened to her on the Other Side, and he’s read her official debrief. In the hospital, when she was exhausted, and he was drowning in too much guilt and grief to refute it, she’d said that he was the only thing that had got her through. It had been just one more way he had harmed her, this belief in him.
-
And then one night in a dream he’s standing on a street corner watching a red-haired Olivia work a crime scene with a scarred Charlie Francis and a spiky-haired Lincoln Lee. For just a second, she looks him right in the eye.
He wakes on a deep breath like he’s broken the surface of the water. The air in his bedroom is chilly, but Olivia, his Olivia, curls warm into his side.
In the dream, he felt calm, almost purposeful, but here he’s shaky, like his blood sugar’s taken a massive hit.
His stomach twists; he untangles himself from her and the blankets, kissing Olivia as lightly as possible on her cheek. He grimaces at the iciness of the air, scrabbles for clothes, and heads downstairs to make a sandwich.
-
The second time it happens, he’s in an apartment he doesn’t know, and a man’s voice is emanating from another room while a red-haired Olivia sits on the bed, contemplative, and he understands, he understands, and he says, “Olivia, you can’t stay here. You have to remember who you are.” And she’s looking at him, confused and lost and lovely, and he says, “You have to remember this.” and he kisses her.
This time when he wakes it’s one of the few nights they’ve spent apart, her at her apartment with Rachel and Ella visiting and his room is even colder than the last time. He grabs for the phone on his side table, the clock showing that it’s barely six in the morning, and presses two, needing to hear her voice like he needs the next breath of air he’s gasping for.
“Peter?” He can hear a smile in her hushed voice, and then, chiding, “Ella Grace, your mother is still sleeping.”
He falls back against the pillow, somehow convinced that it would have been the other Olivia answering, what, from across the universes, why would she be there and really he needs to get his breathing under control because Olivia says, “Peter, what’s wrong? Are you OK?”
“Yeah,” he manages, takes a deep breath, it’s just a dream for fuck’s sake, there’s no way that-, “yeah, I’m fine. Just wanted to talk to you.”
There’s definitely a hint of laughter in her tone now, “Well, join the club. Ella decided we needed to make pancakes at five-thirty and woke me up to tell me about it at five forty-five.”
He huffs out a shaky laugh. Pancakes and Olivia both sound amazing right now. “I’m surprised she lasted fifteen minutes.”
Olivia laughs too, and she’s happy, this is her, happy, “Me too,” another aside, “Ella, can you get me the milk please?” She’s back, “Are you sure you’re alright, Peter? You sounded upset.”
“I’m good, really,” he says, reassuring her, feeling the smile stretching the longer he hears her quiet breathing, “actually, I think I might go make breakfast too.”
“Most important meal of the day,” she says
He loves her, loves her so much. “Tell Ella and Rachel I said hi.” he says, to stop himself from saying he’s coming over.
“Of course. See you tonight?” she says, casual, as easy as they’ve become since she’d been gone again and he’d realized that being away from her for longer than a day was just unacceptable.
“Yeah, definitely.”
They say their goodbyes and hang up and he lays there for a few minutes trying to lose the remnants of that dream. Then he goes downstairs and makes pancakes and when Walter wanders through, they eat breakfast together and Peter doesn’t bring up crossing universes or quantum theory.
-
He’s sitting in the passenger seat of an SUV, outside a perfectly normal suburban home and she’s gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles are white. He knows the strength of that grip, knows what it means to her to hang on to things. He thinks of pancakes, and tells her, “It’s your niece’s birthday. You should call her.”
-
The last time around he has the hang of this, knows he’s dreaming-not-dreaming, that somehow he’s there in a steamed-over bathroom and so is she, too-dark hair even darker in wet tangles, and it’s Olivia and she’s in grave danger. “Do you know why it worked? Because you don’t belong here.” It’s a muted echo of the power of the words she brought him home with, but he says it anyway because he knows, knows that right now she doesn’t know who she is, let alone him, and he’s terrified.
He’s possibly getting the hang of waking up too, and his eyes open to find her looking back at him, her hand lifted partway to his face, “Peter?”
He smiles at her, “I’m ok. Hungry, though.”
She smiles back at him, and even though hungry was an understatement, food can wait.