Title: Sleeping Soundly

Author: Sarbear12456/Japanese and Chocolate

Characters/Pairing: Peter/Olivia

Summary: He would wake to see her smiling face and convince himself that her smile wasn't at all forced. He would spend all day with her, wishing for night, for sleep, to come. Prompt: When you are in love you can't fall asleep because reality is better than your dreams – Dr. Seuss

Peter lay on his bed, still awake, willing himself to lose consciousness. Unfortunately, the myriad of memories and emotions running through is head made it impossible. He recalled every instant of his time with the alternate Olivia, examining each action she made. In doing so, he realised how blatantly obvious it was that she was not who she claimed to be. The differences he had chosen to ignore were now screaming in his mind. Along with her voice. Though, at the time, it had been whispered, a statement of fact, in his mind she was yelling it at him, an accusation. I don't want to sleep in my bed, I don't want to live in my apartment and I don't want to be with you.

To distract himself, temporarily, from the scenes replaying in his mind, he glanced at the room around him. It was a mess, more so than usual. Clothes were strewn across the floor, garbage littering his bedside table, a pair of earrings on the other. They looked precious, but he didn't dare return them to Olivia, yet another reminder of what had happened while she was gone. His eyes skipped over them as they imparted on him with yet another reason he should have noticed she was different: she never wore fancy earrings. He looked instead at the clock, the glaring green numbers displaying '2:17'. Even Walter was sound asleep at this hour. The ceiling above him was laced with the patterns of leaves as moonlight filtered through the branches outside his window.

When Olivia had come to him on the other side, he had been overjoyed. Hurt that she had known and not told him of his true father, but glad to see her nonetheless. He'd lied when he said he liked her red hair better, trying to console himself by pretending the thought of never seeing her again didn't hurt, pretending that he could easily find a replacement. Oh, how true that was. Still, seeing the depth of emotion in her eyes, he determined that, despite his earlier thoughts, the two Olivias were completely different people.

When they had returned and started a relationship he felt…uneasy. Not because of the subtle differences he was sometimes forced to consciously suppress, the feelings pre-empted that. He just felt, indescribably, wrong. He felt it even as he slept soundly in bed next to her, and dreamed of another Olivia. And in the morning, his logical mind would convince him that he had been dreaming of the Olivia beside him and not of the one trapped in an alternate reality.

He would wake to see her smiling face and convince himself that her smile wasn't at all forced. He would spend all day with her, wishing for night, for sleep, to come. He would say it was because his sleep was untroubled when she was near.

But he preferred his dreams far more than the other Olivia. Because, unlike her, his dreams were real, to him. And that should have been the first sign.