He had never been a wallflower…
While his many less then scrupulous endeavors had taught him to be cautious, to dissolve into nothingness at the sight of trouble, to vanish… he liked the attention when it wasn't putting him in danger, liked the way in which he would manage to make an indelible impression upon someone...especially women.
Which is why, it was so hard to exist in a world where he felt like he was nothing more than vapor at times. It tore at him, the way the people he loved and cared about so much looked at him like he was a stranger. While the hostility Walter and Olivia had maintained towards him when he had first appeared was no longer there, the courteous working relationship that replaced it fell so painfully short of everything he had for the past three years.
He missed the familiarity that came with sharing a past with someone, which was saying something given how frequently and willingly he had uprooted himself time after time during the course of his youth.
How easily cutting ties had come to him once… and how he struggles to create even the flimsiest ones now.
The cosmos certainly had a way of messing with him.
Which is why when Tess Amaral walks into the same bar where he's staring at double shot of whiskey in a clear glass and attempting to elicit the deeper meanings of life as it were and takes a seat next to him, Peter can't help but smirk in the way he has become accustomed to every time his strange existence gets stranger.
As she orders her drink, he steals a look at her, trying to see, to ascertain how she might be a different person, how she might be somehow be 'other' than someone he once knew and had ( despite the fact that he had never actually admitted it to himself) loved and cared for.
Trust you… I am not even sure I ever knew you…
Were there any visible signs to having led a life untouched by him … he wanted to know.
She catches his eye on her, in that spooky way that women always can tell when a man's looking at them, casts a coy glance at him and gives him an approving smile.
And he can't help but smile back. Several thoughts run through his head at once and none of them seem to make any sense and he's not even thinking anymore, his mind pleasantly addled with whiskey and his self-confidence feeling reassured for the first time in several weeks because at least someone is pleased to see him here.
He turns to her, wears his most charming smile and starts talking to her. Starts flirting with her if he was being honest to himself… no matter how wrong that should be.
Because he's tired, exhausted in every bone of his body fighting for scraps of recognition and kindness that Walter and Olivia can muster for him that are never enough and never good enough.
Not by a long shot.
He's tired of living without a past, of having people he knows not know him.
Predictably she responds positively, because who was he kidding, of course she would. It had come easily the first time around too- the laughter, the spark. And this time, he already knows what will make her like him.
Something to be said for unfair advantage, he thinks as he takes in the easy waves of her long blond tresses and the sparkle in her eyes, thinking how unlike it was the severe ponytail that Olivia always kept her hair in, or the quiet storm that bubbled under the surface of her green eyes.
No, Tess has a lightness to her which makes it easier for him to reconnect with her- even if she doesn't recognize him or thankfully remember how he just left her in the night one day. She's not haunted like her, doesn't have the same burdens and the more he talks and laughs with her, the more he feels himself relax and feel better than he has in days.
He forces himself not to dwell on other things, drawing instead on the happy times he had shared with Tess and they have in fact had plenty of those before things went downhill and he had fled from Boston.
Despite everything, for a brief time in his life, he had built something with a semblance of stability with this woman and it strikes him that if his sentence in this amnesiac universe that has purged every trace of him rendered him literally immaterial is permanent…
Maybe the least he can do with his disjointed life is build something with Tess again.
After all there is no threat of Big Eddie looming in the corner this time around, no abusive exes, no gambling debts left unresolved, no Walter to baby sit, no Olivia...
… A deep pain courses through his veins as he thinks about her, or unsuccessfully tries not to. Tries to quell the overwhelming feeling of guilt that eats at him as he thinks about the woman with whom he had shared a love that had transcended universes and whose present iteration can't feel anything more for him than barely concealed frustration.
Does she even exist anymore, the Olivia he knows and loves, he can't help wondering and the thought almost makes him sob. Was there anything to go back to? Anyone to betray by staying here in this bar with Tess tonight and letting things progress towards the inevitable… the two of them ending up in bed together.
He's not being cocky; it's just that he knows with certainty the explosive chemistry they can create together…Last time, it had taken them all of three hours of knowing each other to end up naked and entangled in each other's arms
Someone puts a song on the jukebox and Tess, unaware of the internal monologue has pulled him into a dance and he leads her into it without thinking about it, without betraying any of the internal conflicts that are running through him right now. He eases into the rhythm finding an odd comfort in her arms as they move together in an informal cadence and he remembers how he had danced with the other Olivia like this once in a bar. He hadn't known that at the time of course and it's completely fucked up that he finds that memory so pleasant and wonderful.
Because he'd believed with all his heart that he was sharing something mundanely romantic and normal with her.
And once again, he thinks about the number of cruel jokes this universe has played on him and the punch line is always Olivia
He feels the soft way in which Tess brushes her hand against his arm and looks into her eyes and he knows that if wants, he can have her tonight.
Have something tonight, something more than memories of someone he loves … an actual experience that he can touch, sense and feel with a person who doesn't seem shadowed by anything else, wasn't burdened by the knowledge of their past together.
The song ends and another one follows.
He twirls Tess around playfully, pulls her closer and gives her a dazzling smile.
They continue to dance.