Peter’s hand did hurt viciously. For a moment, after he had slammed his hand against the thin wooden door, he was afraid he had broken the hand. After slowly testing the waters by moving his fingers carefully and feeling the brutal pain with every move, he knew nothing was broken, just heavily bruised.
‘Right so,’ he thought, what a stupid incautious reaction of him. Not only smashing the door, more his reaction toward Jenna.
He put his hand in cold water in the sink, and gave himself a few minutes to reflect what had happened.She was right, with all her anger directed at him. He could have said something month ago, but he was simply afraid and simply too arrogant in his believe he could deal with all this on his own. Not realizing that he couldn’t deal with it properly as long as he thought he could leave her out of it. When he saw, that she saw, and that she had developed feelings beyond friendship it was already too late for both of them. There was no way of curing the mess they had made.
When his hand had went numb, he decided to go home to his apartment he had in Cardiff. It was already late and dark, but he hated to sleep in his trailer. Also he needed fresh air, maybe a drink and he also craved a cigarette. He wouldn’t do the last, but for sure the first one.
He gave the smashed door a last glance, with an unpleasant expression, grabbed his coat and left. He took a cab that brought him away from the set, nearer to the city, where he asked the driver to stop. From there he would walk the rest, it was only a twenty minutes walk.
The air was fresh, but it wasn’t that cold. It did him good and he was able to get rid of some tensions in him. He knew; thoughts, worries and doubts would nag him all night and beyond that, so he tried to relax as long as he could.
While he strode through the night, the picture of Jenna appeared in his mind. Raging and crying. Telling him to go away. It wouldn’t be possible, they had to act tomorrow again, play the Doctor and the companion, playing friendship, affection, as nothing ever had happened. He was somehow lucky, that they had already filmed the sleigh scenes and the scenes in the bedroom, all the touchy scenes. Maybe it were these scenes that had made Jenna snap about the topic, had brought her to the edge of the bearable.
He couldn’t deny, that it wasn’t only fun for him to film the scenes. There was an ache inside his heart he always felt very strong when they filmed tender scenes, close and intimate ones. The Christmas Special was full of them, so the pain was almost constantly. Nobody saw of course, he had learned to hide it. He had learned to bury it deep under many layers of denial and of promises he had made long ago. Promises that were still very important to him and he would honour them - not only because he had to.
He never had any problems like this. Life had be good with him, had spared him the turmoil of twisted and complicated feelings. Then they had introduced him as Doctor Who and to Jenna and after a while he had known life seemed to remember that there was something, on a list of life lessons, he still needed to learn about.
The insight that this young woman twisted his feelings scared him. He was 55 years old and didn’t know how to deal with it. Looking back, knowing Jenna had to deal with the same, and his expectation that she could do that easily with her being way younger than him, made him want to smack the back of his head.