Chapter Text
The days had come and gone, only Saturday left before a new week began. Deep, leaden clouds were cast over Alec’s home that looked over the hill. The only light on within was the small overhead which hung idly above the dining room table. Daisy was at her mother’s house and Hardy was left in solitude. It was almost entirely silent, aside from the wind that whipped by every now and again. It was definitely going to rain at some point. It had smelt damp outdoors when Alec had stepped out to smoke nearly a half hour ago.
Work had picked up, again. Same case as before but they had a few leads now. Hardy and Miller had been sent on a call to pick up a couple kids who got caught with drugs. He recognized some of the boys from when he’d given them a bollocksing about Daisy a few months ago. After some stern talking to and a little yelling, one of the boys had given up where they’d gotten the drugs from. It was some dealer that Alec had never heard of, but Ellie knew about. Apparently he’d had a history of selling and had even been taken to jail for it once.
Hardy had written his information down while at work and had taken the files home to give a look over. With nothing better to do, Alec had fallen into the habit of bringing work home with him when work was done. He stayed long enough at the station as it was, he liked to see his home at least a little bit in the week. Not that he actually let himself enjoy any of the time he spent at home, considering he was currently slumped over his dining room table with a spread of papers covering every inch of it. On top of everything else was a folder, a profile for their dealer. Some bloke named Stuart Winship, only 27, with a long list of charges in his history. He’d been caught numerous times supplying and only received a slap on the wrist for a lot of them.
Alec scoffed as he read through the punishments for some of the charges. They were mostly fines, which was ridiculous. If Hardy had been the one to catch him? He would’ve had a fine and time behind bars. Especially now that he was trying to bust the big supplier of the area. This guy might have information on who was bringing the drugs into the county. Winship had plenty of charges for dealing, but none for making anything that he was supplying, which meant he had to be getting it from someone else. Alec suspected that the “someone else” was who he was after. The guy was seemingly normal aside from his history. He graduated high school, didn’t attend university or any other institution— which wasn’t entirely surprising, considering he dealt for a living — and lived in a regular apartment complex.
He circled the address to the apartment that Winship lived in with a pen. He would have to pull Miller away from her desk to go check this out. Hardy had this feeling within him, one that told him that this guy was going to be important to their investigation in some form. His eyes skimmed over the profile, lingering on the photo in the corner. Blonde, blue eyes, broad shoulders. The paperwork, though it wasn’t the most recent, said that Bryan stood at 6 feet 2 inches, roughly 2 metres. No wonder those kids were so afraid to give him up, the man probably towered over them. He was a hair taller than Alec, even.
It was infuriating that kids his daughter's age were getting into bad things like drugs. He’d already lost so much respect for the rising generations from previous cases. There were plenty of bad people who blended in amongst those who were normal, he just wished there was a way to fish them all out before they hurt people. Before they hurt people he knew. When he and Ellie picked those boys up from the street and brought them to the station, Alec had wanted to give them a proper yell. Not only had they preyed on his daughter, now they were getting into this nonsense? They were lucky that Ellie had gotten to them first. That didn’t mean they got off, though. She had given them quite a talking to. He’d stood there, watching with a smirk. Miller had gotten especially good at tearing a new one into people who needed it.
A yawn escaped him. The sun had long set and he’d been up for nearly 20 hours at this point. Exhaustion pulled at his eyes and his body felt entirely spent. Sleep had been hard to come by recently for Alec. He’d felt tired enough to sleep, by all means, but it never came. He would lay in his bed, as comfortable as his skeleton would allow for, and stare at nothing in particular for hours as he tossed and turned. Insomnia wasn’t anything new to Hardy, he’d dealt with it for years at this point, but it had never been this bad before. The cup of coffee to his left likely wasn’t helping the situation. Everything within Hardy was begging him to lay down and sleep, but he didn’t have the time to spare. This case was nagging at him and would continue to do so until it was solved. Despite his drive to continue, Alec couldn’t help but rest his head in his palm for a moment.
It wasn’t until he’d open his eyes again to find his living room dark as night that Hardy realized that he’d fallen asleep. His eyelids were heavy and his body was sore from sleeping in his wooden table chair. He ran a hand through his hair as he came back to consciousness. Rain sloshed against the windows directly to his right. The lights had gone out at some point, there might've been a power outage. With how heavy the downpour sounded against the glass? It was entirely possible. Earlier, when Alec was reviewing the files, the clouds had seemed rather gloomy.
With an exhale through his nose, Alec pushed up from the table. The chair slid across the wooden floor behind him, making a subtle noise as it went. His body protested every part of the action. His bed seemed like a haven, much more so now that his entire being ached. There were a few tablets of paracetamol tucked away in one of the kitchen drawers, which is where he was now headed. Alec’s throat scratched with every swallow, his feet dragged behind him with each step he took. Clearly his short slumber had taken a toll on him. The microwave and stove clocks were blank, the displays entirely empty. The power was definitely out. Not only was the power out, there was also no indication of what time it was. Clearly it was late but not yet morning. Probably somewhere from 1 to 3 o’clock in the morning.
In any case, it was much too early— or was it late? — for Alec to be awake. He was going to take a tablet, trudge to his bedroom, and lay down. He needed to be up at 6 to be at the station. Hardy couldn’t help but feel like something was… wrong. The air felt a little too thick and still. An eerie aura settled over the kitchen as he fumbled around in the dark for a counter. His foot found the edge of a cabinet before his hands found something to use for guidance. He groaned and muttered under his breath,
“Bloody hell.”
His toe radiated a painful, dull throb up to his ankle and he grimaced. The pain of stubbing a toe never seemed to get any less agonizing, no matter how many times he did it. It really was astonishingly dark within Hardy’s house. The moon was covered by the clouds that poured rain, leaving nothing in the sky to shine dim light in through his windows. The only thing he had to guide his path was the feel of the counter beneath his hand. If he had remembered that his phone was a source of light, he’d use it. Alas, Alec wasn’t nearly aware enough to consider that as an option and continued to fumble around in the dark.
The drawer he was looking for was seemingly nowhere to be found. He ripped a few of them open; one contained his silverware, which was dwindling and reminded him to run the dishwasher after work later today. Another drawer opened, another pile of junk that was decidedly not a package of pain medicine. With a frustrated groan, Alec slid open what was likely the last drawer gone untouched in his kitchen and found what he was looking for. A small blister pack of paracetamol, 4 already used and 4 left. He tore two of the tablets open and dumped the pills into his hand. His throat scratched as he forced the pills down with a dry swallow. Alec stood with his eyes closed for a moment, just taking the moment in. The patter of water against his windows ebbed and flowed, bringing a sort of serenity.
His peace didn’t last, as always. It never did. A loud bang sounded somewhere outside his house on the hill. With how the weather was outside, it was probably his rubbish that he’d put out earlier that night. His neighbors would bitch at him if he left it out there for them to find in the morning, even if it was absolutely none of their business. Still, he needed to take care of it before they found any more reason to whinge him for things that don’t matter. He wasn’t particularly excited to have to pick trash up in the pouring rain, but he was even less keen on the idea of picking up day-old soggy trash. The universe had seemingly curated everything happening in his life in just the right way to mildly inconvenience him.
A glance outside his kitchen window into the pitch darkness confirmed that his rubbish bin had toppled over. One of the bags had slipped out of the bin and onto the gravel beside the road. The top had come un-sinched, thanks to Hardy’s terrible job at tying it, and a few broken down boxes spilled out the top. Alec had wished that his intuition had been wrong when he thought that the bang sounded like his can had tipped. He’d really hoped that it had been something else that could have waited until morning. Anything else, actually. If he wanted to pick up trash, he’d have been a garbage man instead of a detective.
Having decided that standing around and whining about the task wasn’t going to get it done any sooner and was actively keeping him from going back to bed. He inched out of his kitchen, narrowly avoiding stubbing his toe on the same corner, and aimlessly walked towards the coat hanger by the door. Luckily he knew the layout of his home well enough by now to not have too much trouble getting there. He slipped a coat over his shirt; the same one he wore to work the day prior, he hadn’t cared to get changed when he came home. It wasn’t exactly rain-proof, but Alec didn’t own a proper raincoat. Who did in this day and age? Miller, probably. That orange coat of hers seemed pretty rain repellent.
With mild protection from the torrent outside, Alec made his way to the sliding glass doors that led to the path where his trash lay collecting water. He slipped some shoes on and brought his attention to the door. The lock clicked and a whhhssshhh sounded as he eased the door open. Droplets of rain began to scatter on the floor where the door no longer kept the water out. A scowl settled over Hardy’s face before he took the dive and scurried down his steps. Not even 30 seconds had passed before the coat he’d shrugged on was soaked. He squinted and sped down the path to where the trash was, bent over to pick it up, and righted the orientation of the bin. In all, it took less than 2 minutes. Still, he’d managed to get soaked through to his core with how heavily it was coming down out there.
He sloughed the coat he wore off, now thoroughly drenched and dripping onto the wooden floor. That same scowl still sat on his face as he wrung the coat out and hung it up. He didn’t worry much about the puddle of water that resulted, it would dry out eventually. He slipped out of the trousers he’d been wearing and left them in a pile on the floor, as they had also gotten absolutely doused when he’d gone out. Now that he was less sopping than before, Hardy made his way through the main room and into his bedroom. The showers outside pelted against the glass doors that led from his room onto the patio where he’d just been. Prior to Sandbrook, rain had been quite calming for Alec. Now? Not so much.
His bed was unmade from the morning before. Alec never cared to make his bed, didn’t deem it necessary in the grand scheme of things. His room didn’t contain much else aside from his bed and some clothes in his closet. He had never been much of a decorator aside from a simple picture frame or two. That was always Tess’s thing when they’d been together. Now, Daisy would put things up when she came over. It always brought a little smirk to Alec’s face when he would come home from work to find some more pictures on the wall or little knick knacks scattered on the end table by the couch.
He lingered by his dresser, listening to the patter on the glass. The curtains were closed, but they did little to muffle the sound. He took a step forward, his foot landing on the carpet that sat at the foot of his bed. It squelched underneath him. Water permeated his sock. Alec’s eyes immediately shoot down and dread begins to gush through his veins. It was pooling around his feet. Water was everywhere, all over the floor. He rushed to the sliding door and ripped the curtain open, revealing that it wasn’t leaking in from outside. A tingling sensation began at the tips of his fingers and ended directly at his heart.
The puddle only seemed to grow. It sloshed as Alec rushed from one door to the next, now frantically pulling at his bedroom door, but it wouldn’t budge. He was panicking now. It pooled at his knees and rose to his waist before he could process what was happening. His lungs seized and body seemed to give out. A familiar weight sat in his arms as he thrashed around. Hardy didn’t dare glance down. He couldn’t. He knew what it was. The weight of a body wasn’t something that people forgot. Pain shot through his chest, and then he woke up.
Hardy jolted, eyes wide and alert, lungs gasping for air. He was still sitting at his dining room table, case files scattered about. Looking to the floor confirmed that there was no water. The sun filtering in through the window told Alec that it was morning. An uneasy weight settled in his chest as his mind began to clear. It had been a nightmare, nothing more. He couldn’t help but feel fraught and a bit faint of heart.
Alec slid his hands down his face and let his elbows rest against the table. It had been months since he’d had such a vivid nightmare. He sucks in a deep breath and holds it in for a moment as his head sits in his hands. Hardy glanced at his phone and flipped the screen to face up. The display lit up and revealed that it was a quarter till 7 AM. Miller would likely be blowing up his phone soon enough if he didn’t get around to the station soon. With a huff and a swallow, Alec gathered up the papers he’d fallen asleep on and tucked them all away in the manilla folder they came from.
A nagging hunger began to pull at his stomach. Alec pulled his suit jacket off of the back of the chair and dug his fingers into one of the pockets. A box of Marlboro Red’s came out when his hand surfaced. He set the pack onto the table and shrugged the jacket on. With a little smoothing and adjusting of his tie, it was nearly impossible to tell that he was wearing day old clothes. Once situated, he slipped his phone into his pocket and grabbed the box up, smacking one side on the palm of his hand before flipping it and doing the same to the other side. The dark clouds from yesterday evening seemed to have passed, leaving only streaks of ivory across the sky. It was a little brisk as Hardy stepped out onto the patio, but he knew it would be blazing by noon.
His eyes settled on his rubbish can. No sign of having been overturned at any point in the night. The ground wasn’t even wet, so Alec didn’t think it had actually rained at all the night prior. It was hard for him to shake the feeling that nightmare had brought him. Waking up like that always left him feeling wrong, like he was a pathetic, useless shell of who he was before Sandbrook. He flicked his lighter aflame and held it up to the end of his cigarette. The end began to ember and Alec took a few puffs to ensure it was lit.
On the other end of town at CID, a thud sounded from Ellie’s car as she forced the door shut. The sun was beaming down on her back as she opened the back to grab her purse from the seat. She’d arrived earlier than usual, since Tom and Fred were off with their aunt Lucy for the day. On top of that, she’d actually stopped at the Greggs in town and got a sausage roll for breakfast. It was tucked in her purse, as she intended to eat it at her desk while sorting some of the files she’d gotten out yesterday. Another thud sounded and she was off to the steps, purse in hand.
Once she had gotten to her desk after giving our various “hello”s and lingering at the kitchenette to pour herself a coffee, Ellie sank into her chair and took out her sausage wrap to enjoy. The wax paper covering crinkled as she pulled it back to reveal the little treat waiting within. She didn’t have time to take a second bite before Hardy strolled into the office with a rather miffed look on his face.
“Grab yer keys, Miller. We’ve got to go,” He uttered in her general direction. Alec ducked into his office to grab something, not caring to turn the lights on.
“What? I’ve just sat down,” Ellie complained in response.
“Right, and? Put your coat on, let's go.”
And Alec was right back out the door. Ellie let off a groan as she packed her sausage roll back up. It went right back in her purse as she gathered her items up. It really ground her gears when Hardy did that. He’d stroll in all high and mighty, demand her to drive him around, and then expect her to do it without a second thought. Miller had actually really wanted to make a dent in some of the paperwork on her desk today, but that goal went straight out the window. In spite of her fussing about how much it annoyed her, she found herself going along with it anyway. Eight times out of ten, Ellie was the driver, and eight times out of ten, she hadn’t been the one dragged to the car. It had been understandable when Hardy was going through his bout with his heart, since he legally couldn’t drive. But now he had his pacemaker, so there was no logical reason for him to never drive.
Ellie trailed behind Alec out to the parking lot. It had been less than 30 minutes since she last saw this place and she was having a considerably better time then.
“Oi,” She called out to Alec, who was waiting by her car.
When he looked at her, she threw her keys and hollered, “Catch.”
“What?” Alec fumbled for the keys that were suddenly hurdling at him. He didn’t quite get a grip on them and they tumbled to the ground. Miller couldn’t help but laugh a bit as she rounded her car to the passenger side.
“It’s your turn to drive.”
He shot her a look that signified he was less than impressed with her stunt.
“Coulda handed them to me.”
“I could’ve, yeah,” Ellie acknowledged. She ducked into the car when Alec unlocked the doors. He slinked down into the driver's seat not long after.
“Mind telling me where we’re going?”
“Bloke that was selling drugs to those kids, Stuart Winship. I want to question him,” He spoke as he turned the key in the ignition. The engine came roaring to life before streamlining into a gentle rumble.
“At his doorstep?” Ellie knew that probably wasn’t the case, but she had to ask.
Hardy shot her a look as he turned to back out of the spot.
“Obviously not. I’m gonna ask him to the station. If he says no, then I won’t ask so nicely the second time.”
“We could get a warrant.”
“No time.”
Alec shifted gears into drive and started down the lot to the exit. There was never any time. Technically, Alec had every right to arrest Winship on sight, considering he had multiple accounts of him selling drugs to minors. He intended to do so if their suspect didn’t come willingly.
“Do you think he knows something?” Ellie questioned as they cruised down the road.
“Aye, I think he knows more than he gives on. He’s gotten slammed for selling, right?”
She nods, wondering where he’s going with this.
“But never for making it.”
And then it clicked. She made a noise, “Oh.”
“Exactly. So he’s getting it from somewhere.”
“So you think he’s part of the chain, like he’s buying it from someone higher up?”
Alec gave a stiff nod. Ellie hadn’t considered that when thinking about Stuart. She was friends with his older brother in primary school, but she’d never actually been close with Stuart himself. A good thing, it seems; he was bad business now, everyone knew. Ellie hadn’t stayed close with his older brother, she couldn’t even remember his name. It might’ve been Kyle or something similar.
“I actually knew his older brother,” Ellie mentions. She basically knew everyone in town.
“What?”
“Yeah, he was in the same grade as me.”
“Christ, small town,” Alec muttered slowly under his breath.
“It sure is.”
Some moments of silence passed. It wasn’t the sort of silence that was uncomfortable, just warm and quiet. Over their years working together and being friends outside of work, they’d grown rather content with these little silences. At least Alec had. Ellie had always been much more talkative compared to Alec. She mostly spent their time together talking at Alec rather than talking with him.
She glanced at him and was concerned to find that he looked like he hadn’t slept. His clothes were wrinkled as well. Hardy wasn’t the most put-together man that she knew, far from it actually, but he looked worse than he usually did.
“Are you okay? You look like shite.”
“Thanks,” He grumbled sarcastically.
“I’m being serious, you knob! God forbid I worry about you.”
“Well… Don’t. I’m fine. Just had a rough time sleeping.”
“You can’t tell me to just stop worrying, it doesn’t work that way.”
“I’m telling you to stop worrying cos I’m fine, Miller. Got it?”
Hardy was oddly defensive this morning, worse than usual. Miller was used to him being a shithead but usually it wasn’t him being hostile.
“Right… Whatever.”
If he wanted to be crabby, then so be it. She wasn’t going to let his bad mood ruin her morning. She’d expressed concern and he clearly didn’t want to talk about it. That’s not her problem. Her problem right now was that she was hungry, since a certain someone had whisked her away before she could eat her breakfast. That sausage roll was still in her bag, and she intended to eat it. Couldn’t work on an empty stomach, in any case.
She thought about offering some to Hardy, but she knew he’d decline. He wasn’t much of an eater, which she teased him about quite enough. Even though she already knew the answer, she had to ask.
“I’ve got a sausage roll, do you want to split it?”
“No.”
Figures.
“How long until we get there?” She asked, not acknowledging his decline.
“5 or so minutes.”
Ellie gave a nod. That was enough time to get it down. On the plus side, that also meant that she only had to deal with him for five more minutes. She could do that.