Some material in this chapter was originally meant to be a one-shot fic, set in Series 1. It just didn't seem enough to stand on its own, so I folded it in here.
Peter kicked off his shoes and stretched out on his bed - or at least, what would be his bed for the next few nights. The bed felt familiar, but the room didn't look like the one he'd had the night before the football match; he realised his memories of that room were hazy, and he was grateful. One less thing to cling to.
He tried not to think of his hunger, which was now bad enough to be a headache. It rang out above his teeth, behind his eyes. He'd stopped at the top of the stairs to watch the last customers leaving the bar; then he'd seen a man who looked like Sean Dooley, locking up behind them. It was too strange to question, too humiliating to plead for leftovers...
He heard a soft knock at the door, then a jostle of the knob, then something bouncing against it.
By the time he opened the door, Assumpta was halfway back to her own room. In the better light of the corridor, he could appreciate the sight of her standing up, breathing...
Looking down, he saw a plastic bag dangling from the doorknob. Not an abandoned baby, at least.
"'Sumpta, wait."
She turned. "Um. It's no big deal," she said, drawing closer to keep her voice low. For a split second the light caught in the tiny hairline scar that crossed her eyebrow. Another memory. Broken glass. A stone. Blood.
He pulled the bag off the doorknob. It had some weight to it. Glass.
She got that old uneasy look on her face, and started explaining things too quickly. "The durif is left over; Dooley was afraid wouldn't keep any longer. The bread was the same. I offered to pay but he insisted..." She was blushing. Blood. "I remembered you were hungry, so...half a loaf of bread, half a jug of wine, and..." Quick as she had reached his doorway, she began to retreat again.
"Join me," he heard himself say, powerless against the vodka in his system and the voice in his ears. Stone.
"No, no. I ought to go see my dog, and you need to put on some dry clothes."
"Can't."
"What?"
"Well, my luggage is in the boot of Ambrose's car. He's probably out cold by now."
She turned over her shoulder.
"Fionn probably is as well," Peter went on. "C'mon. Have a bite to eat."
Assumpta shook her head, then paused, longing eyes on the bag.
Then she looked up. "Do you promise not to consecrate it first?"
Assumpta wondered if anyone had ever done a picnic on the floor of this particular room before. She wondered if the metal bed frame beside her was the one that had once been her own. She wondered if Fionn was worrying, back in her own temporary pub quarters; perhaps he thought she had abandoned him again.
Peter tore the bread with his hands and passed her the first piece. "This isn't the room I had last time," he guessed, looking around.
She couldn't stifle a grin. "What, before the football match? No, no...I guess it's no surprise, you wouldn't remember."
He frowned. "I don't."
"Well, you came down for a glass of water to take your paracetamol and codeine..."
It clicked. "My ribs were killing me."
"Yeah. As soon as you downed it, I remembered you'd been drinking wine with your friend not an hour before."
As if on cue, he pulled the cork from the half-empty wine bottle. Realising there were no glasses about, he took a swig straight from it, then passed it to her. Drinking from the same bottle, twice in one night, she thought. Too intimate.
She drank anyway. "So for a while we talked, and then you started to get...a bit pie-eyed. And then a bit wobbly. And then very, very wobbly. And then I asked if you needed help back to your room, and you patted your pocket, and you said, 'I think I've locked meself out.'"
Peter looked as if it was beginning to come back to him. "Where did you end up putting me?"
She felt some blood rush to her cheeks. "My room."
His smirk was as skewed as ever. "You didn't!"
"I did. Remember when I woke you from downstairs, next morning?"
"Same door I'd knocked to wake you," he said, recollection dawning. "You did tell me to plead the fifth."
"Yeah, well."
"So where'd you sleep?"
"You don't remember that either!" She took a bit more wine. "I'd brought you up a bag of frozen peas to keep on your bruised ribs, but you couldn't get them to stay in place, so...I kept them on you. At arm's length. Or as far away as the bed would let me get."
His face looked as hot as hers felt right now. "Thanks for that."
She couldn't resist. "Wish you could've heard some of the things you said in your sleep that night."
"I didn't!"
"Oh, yes."
He looked away, still aglow. For a moment they sat quiet, listening to the hum of electricity in the cosy room.
"What did you do when Jenny came back for her things?"
"Locksmith had been and gone by then. All's well..."
He signalled his desire for the bottle, and she passed it. "Not the only time we spent a rainy night, I suppose."
She remembered the baby, the night nodding off in shifts on the same sofa. She had let him take the first one, for an utterly selfish reason: so she could sleep in the warmth he left behind.
She took one more bite of bread. "Well, no worries this time. I ought to get back to Fionn." She rose.
He stood as well, less steadily.
She looked at him once more. "Peter...I am sorry. I thought I knew best. I've regretted it every day."
His eyes had gone glassy again, too like that night years ago. "I am...glad," he stammered. "I mean, you're alive and all."
"Get some sleep," she said, combating an urge to reach for him. He'd be sober in the morning, and he'd surely hate her again.
"And you," he yawned.
"Get out of those wet clothes," she stammered before she had time to think better of it. Now his grin was bright enough to make her feel sunburnt.
She shut his door behind her and went back to her own room, changed into her pyjamas. If she bent around Fionn, like mortar round a brick, there was almost room enough for her in the bed.