Ginger’s small, warm fingers wrapped around his, stirring to mind hundreds of memories with that one simple touch - nights on the stage taking their bows together; clinging to each other out on the Strip so as not to lose one another in the crowds; their fingers twining together as they fucked, rough but affectionate, as all things between them had been.
Peter held her hand tight; he still needed the contact as much as she did. “I can see that, I just...” he sighed. He needed to focus. There were things she needed to know. “It’s not bullshit. It’s real. The Seal broke; it damaged the walls between worlds and people keep slipping through into this one. This is a different universe from ours.” He looked down at their clasped hands, his voice getting quieter. “The timing’s always off too. I’ve been here for months now, Ginger.” Months living without you, he left unsaid.
Those months hadn’t seemed like so long until now. Ginger’s arrival, the way she looked at him, how he himself responded to her... it all drove home how much had changed - how much he had changed. For all their problems, all the times they had fought and hurt each other, they’d always known where they stood with each other. It was what had made their volatile relationship work for as long as it had.
That surety with each other, that was gone now; he could read it in her face as she looked at him. It was like she was standing still, a snapshot from his life at the moment when everything had begun to change. She hadn’t lived to see him start to fight, to put in the effort and try to be a better man. To her, he was still the douche bag, playboy magician, slowly drinking himself to death. She didn’t know him anymore.