Work Text:
Well, shit.
They stand in the doorway, Ellie on her tiptoes with the spike of nervous energy and Hardy leaning back on his heels as if to put additional distance between himself and the one, single bed placed in the center of the room.
“It’s not all that bad-”
“I’ll sleep on the couch,” Hardy says, still giving the bed a look like at any moment it’s going to swallow him. He shifts his bag up on his shoulder, crosses the threshold into the room and goes straight for the dresser.
Ellie releases her hands from where they were absentmindedly twisting together and follows him, shutting the door with a sense of impending doom, which seems overdramatic. Opening a drawer, Hardy begins putting the contents of his bag inside in loose piles.
Trying to keep the conversation light, and not focused on the one, single bed, Ellie says, “I wouldn’t have pegged you as the guy to use hotel room dressers.” Hardy grunts but says nothing.
“Just, you know, based on your place,” she continues, taking a few things out of her purse and putting them on the bedside table. “I don’t feel like ‘putting things away’ is necessarily a strength of yours.”
“Shocking that I’ve lived this long, then,” he says, closing the drawer and turning around to look at her. His voice is punctuated with the ease of sarcasm, but his shoulders are ramrod straight rather than relaxed. She glances back to roll her eyes at him and toes off her shoes.
“It’s shocking you’re alive for many reasons, but I don’t think that trait is the one causing harm,” she says, pulling her feet on top of the comforter and sitting back against the pillow, arms crossed around her shins. “No need for theatrics.”
He sits on the couch, pulls out a folder from his briefcase and begins thumbing through it. “Working already?” she says, with a sort of mildly horrified expression. “We only just got here.”
He glances up but doesn’t respond.
—
In the dark room, her heart thuds along in her chest, pressing uncomfortably against her ribs. This is by far the least stressful thing in her life right now, she thinks, but maybe because of the actual audacity of reality to do this to them she feels like she can’t set down her nervous energy. She can practically feel the tension rolling off Hardy in waves as he lays next to her, and tries to suck in a quiet, deep breath without giving away that she actually has a need to calm down at all. That this isn’t something she’s wholly unencumbered by. That sleeping next to her former boss, after he stalked into town and stole her rightful promotion, tore into the connecting fabric of everyone she knew and some she didn’t, arrested her own husband for murder, and successfully convinced her to join him to solve two more murders, was something people did all the time and she had plenty of experience with it, thank you very much.
She imagined cucumber slices on her eyes, despite having never been to a spa in her life. Calm as a cucumber. She mildly regrets being the one to argue it was unreasonable for him to sleep on the couch that was clearly six inches too short for him. Plus, the bed has plenty of space for two adults. It’s fine. She’s fine.
“Miller.”
She jumps, having quite forgotten Hardy was a real and cognizant person next to her and not merely the idea of a man. She lets out the breath she sucked in, embarrassed.
“What?” she hisses back through the dark in his general direction.
“Stop fiddling with the sheet, will you? It’s driving me mad.”
She can feel the heat rise in her cheeks. So much for unencumbered. Quite incredible she can be a detective at all with so many easy tells.
She doesn’t deign to answer him but shoves her hands under her thighs to bury her meddling fingers. He sighs, and she can almost feel the tension shift off his body.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and she strains to pick apart his tone. “For this, after what happened in court.”
She makes a face in the dark, knowing he can’t see, trying to dispel the unique feeling of being pinned down, figuratively, by a vulnerable Alec Hardy. It’s so rare that she doesn’t think in all the time they’ve known each other, and all the potential moments for vulnerability, this dynamic has ever happened. It’s like dealing with a wild animal; one wrong move and you will frighten it away from your outstretched hand and likely never see it again. She grimaces with the weight of it all and looks imploringly at the ceiling for help. The ceiling chooses to stay as it is.
“It’s not your fault they had one room left,” she says, trying for lightness in her voice. He shifts slightly on the bed.
“Well, not exactly ethical for a DI to allow it. With a colleague.”
“We’re in boatloads of ‘not exactly ethical,’” she says, turning her head just slightly to direct it at him as she stares at the ceiling. “But at this rate, it’s not worth worrying about. Besides, former DI, former DS. And you were married to your DS before.” If her voice takes on the slightest hint of accusation at the end, she’s not in any place to analyze it and thus lets it slip into the dark to marinate between them.
He runs a hand through his hair in exasperation. “Right,” he says, and something in his voice makes her think oh, there he goes, back into the forest as she imagines him running away from her as various easily-spooked woodland creatures - a deer, a rabbit, a fox. It’s his turn for a heavy inhale - she wonders how she’s supposed to tell if it’s emotional weight or if his heart is failing him again, and whether there’s a difference between the two. She wriggles her fingers under her legs to release more of the nervous energy she can’t seem to dispel.
“You know,” she says, “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be.” She glares at the ceiling again, blaming it for putting her in a place where she has to be in this emotional pickle with someone who by definition seems to have no emotional barometer unless weaponizing it for an interrogation.
In her mind’s eye, she suddenly sees the two of them standing in the pale pink of the women’s bathroom at Wessex Crown Court, and pauses her glaring to contemplate what that step forward meant, in terms of Alec Hardy’s emotional barometers.
Something to think about.
He moves, suddenly, and she looks over like she’s molasses in a glass. He’s on his side, a good distance away still, hair flopped onto the pillow, giving him the air of boyishness. His lips part and her eyes dart down-
The only light in the room filters in from the gap between the curtains, and she can just make out the shape of his face, the spot where his jaw leads behind his ear, the dark shadow of his beard, the reflection of the light in his eyes. Everything feels insulated and slow; like they’re in a bubble, the space around them slightly distorted and distant in a way that feels safe but also fragile. His soft puffs of breath curl warmly around her throat, making her own breath catch there as if she’s barely breathing at all.
If he knows how to do anything, it’s how to stare someone down; how to pressure them into speech or action while barely moving a muscle. The lack of connection, of reciprocity, fuels the person opposite him to react, or to crack. The difference is, she realizes, the intent. She wonders if it’s like a switch. She wonders if he knows the switch exists, or if it just happens to him.
Now, the same face he uses to intimidate is being used for warmth. It could be like staring into deep space for the longest time and seeing nothing but blackness and stars, and then having a nebula appear in the distance. When you see it, you’re drawn to it. A moth to light. A mosquito to skin. A shark to flesh. And she’s been starving.
- and when she finally feels like she comes back into her body she sees his hand resting between them, like an apology, or an opening, or maybe an offering.
“I know,” he says, and it takes her a minute to think back to what he’s referring to. She licks her lips and watches his eyes grow a bit darker in the dim light. “I’ve been wanting- ” He pauses. “I haven’t wanted to- ”
She feels like she’s been cast in amber. Revered, but unable to move. Inhaling, but unable to breathe.
She rolls on her side, now much closer than they were before, noses and hands and breath breaching the no-man’s-land. He looks exposed, blinking at her in the dark.
“It’s okay,” she murmurs, worried less about being well-spoken and thorough and more about the millimeter between their index fingers. She lifts her own and gently brushes it over his first knuckle, up and around to curl into his palm. When she brings her eyes back up to his, he’s already moving forward, slowly pressing away the space between them and giving her plenty of time to pull away, as if her palm wasn’t burning settled against his.
If Ellie had spent more time imagining what kissing Alec Hardy would be like, she might have pictured it something brusque, maybe happening all at once in a quick moment. Something shocking, abrasive. Maybe happening so quick you barely realize it happened at all and then it’s over and you’re back in the bright light of reality.
Instead, it’s like scratching an itch. The bone-deep satisfaction of having a need met. The only abrasiveness of the whole thing is the scratch of his beard against the softness of her chin. It’s almost languid - she can’t break the feeling that she’s moving through liquid, like honey, everything tainted with the sweetness.
As she tilts her head slightly, he moves forward, hand pressing up on her jaw, cradling the soft skin under her earlobe, spanning the back of her neck to her hairline. His fingers twine into the curls at her nape and her mouth opens, her hands coming to his sides as she rolls onto her back, wondering how she ever thought he was as dispassionate as concrete when now she’s immensely aware of every spot where their bodies touch; even the surreptitious bump of an ankle bringing heat. He wasn’t always the way he was as she knew him, her brain supplies. There were days and weeks and moons that passed before he reached her. And maybe this was how he lived. Open, soft, flush against a lover.
He leaves her mouth to put his where his palm was before, his hand moving up to cradle the back of her head, and she opens her eyes to find the ceiling again. As she feels him drag his stubble along her neck she lets out a breathy gasp, simultaneously embarrassed to have let on and reveling in her ability to still feel pleasure, after all this. At the sound he pulls back, leaning into his elbow as he hovers close.
“Ellie,” he says, breath washing over the shell of her ear and resulting in goosebumps on her arms. He runs his nose along the ridge and takes a deep breath. “We should. Talk.” He pauses again. “Before.”
From where she is still facing away from him, she runs her fingers along his side and feels him shiver slightly. She nods, working to dispel the syrupy feeling from her limbs. “Now?” The feeling of embarrassment resurfaces at how breathless she sounds, but she figures he might as well know what he’s done to her.
“No.” He rests his face in the curve of her neck, just breathing. “I just. Don’t feel like we should mess this up.”
She puts her chin on his shoulder, more awake now and feeling like the bubble has burst, but in a way that hasn’t left her hurtling down - rather that she’s already grounded. Present.
She brings a hand up from his back to comb through his hair and nods again, looking over his shoulder into the dark. “I’d appreciate that.”
He grunts and nuzzles deeper, letting his weight fall half to the side and half on top of her. As her fingers skim over the base of his skull, her mind wanders to what this will all feel like in the harsh morning light. Whether it will be recoverable.
Well, shit, she thinks. They’ll deal with that when it comes.