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He'd bought the champagne on Nightingale's birthday. It was a stupidly expensive bottle and was the kind of dumb gesture which always got him into trouble and ended up being counted in evidence against him when he complained that he had no idea where his money went. But, still, no one knew about this particular instance of financial folly. Not yet, anyway.
It had been more than three years since he'd met Nightingale, the year he bought the champagne, and they'd never actually celebrated his birthday which, maybe, had been down to the fact that outliving everyone he'd ever cared about by yet another year wasn't something Thomas Nightingale felt was worth celebrating. But, equally, it always seemed to Peter that the first year you knew somebody, making a big deal out of their birthday was weird (unless you were involved) and the second year, as it turned out in this particular case, they hadn't exactly had time. But, by the third year they'd known each other, the job had settled down a bit and things between them had been, well, they'd been getting interesting to say the least and a good birthday celebration seemed like just the sort of thing to push them over the edge and toward what Peter had wanted for longer than he felt comfortable admitting.
Anyway, as it turned out, he hadn't needed the champagne. The other elements of the dinner plan he'd collaborated on with Molly (the cake with the slightly chaotic icing and the single candle Peter had lit with new-found precision and a very controlled lux-impello) had been enough. At least paired with beer in the coach house and England thoroughly destroying Wales at rugby.
Peter couldn't quite tell what exactly had tipped them over the edge and made him bold enough, when he'd caught Nightingale looking at him the way he'd begun to just recently, to meet Nightingale's eye and lean in to see if Nightingale would, too.
It had been a brief kiss, the first one, and Peter had pulled back afterwards and said “happy birthday” with a smile that didn't quite cover the dread he felt that he'd just ruined everything.
His fears had proved unfounded and Nightingale had practically crawled into his lap a while later which made it seem more like he was the one getting a birthday present than Nightingale.
It hadn't been the easiest or best way to start a relationship and things had stalled and back-stepped. He'd almost run away, like he was a kid all over again, until he realised that this wasn't something he could bear to lose.
Still, it's Nightingale's birthday the next year when he digs the champagne out from where it was stashed amongst a load of boxes in the coach house. He thinks he'll tell Nightingale about it and that Nightingale will laugh but that his smile will be fond; and, really, that was all Peter had hoped to achieve with it in the first place. But this year, unlike the last, he has good reason to hope for more than just a smile and Nightingale's always been good at giving him more than he bargained for.