Work Text:
The introduction of spring sours Hardy's mood.
April showers had indeed brought May flowers. Broadchurch is suddenly filled with bluebells, large clusters of them gathering around his old, ramshackle house. Mother Nature has always been cruel, he thinks. Every morning a new reminder of the lives he couldn't save, of the days Pippa will never get to see.
For weeks, he marches into his office looking as rumpled and irritated as he had all those years ago, when he met Miller over the dead body of her boy's best friend. He works himself too hard, doesn't sleep or eat enough. And once, after a particularly grueling day interviewing suspects, he loses his temper with her. Miller can feel all of their progress slowly melting away, the rough edges of his personality coming back into place.
So, she goes to his house.
Seconds after he's opened the door -- still in his suit from earlier, even though it's nearly half twelve -- Miller bustles past him, moving to sit down on his couch.
"Miller, what--"
"Are you going to tell me what's wrong?"
He rolls his eyes, and she fights the urge to punch him in the face.
"Seriously? You came all the way over here for that?" He asks, his usual bitterness on full display.
"Quite right. And I'll keep showing up at your house until you tell me what's wrong," she says. "Is it Daisy again? More problems with the boys at school? Because I can--"
"It isn't Daisy."
She sighs. She had forgotten how painful it can be to get any sort of personal information out of him. A bit like pulling teeth, she muses. Or putting a toddler to bed at a decent hour.
"Well, what is then, Hardy? We were all getting along. I thought... you liked it here. And now, everybody at the station's back to calling you 'shithead' and I--"
"Miller, stop! For God's sake, it's nothing, it's... the bluebells. It's this time of year."
"What?" She shakes her head in disbelief, not quite following his train of thought. "I don't understand."
Hardy exhales loudly, combing his fingers through his hair. He moves to sit beside her on the couch.
“This time of year, it’s… suffocating. The bluebells. They bloom everywhere.”
She thinks back to all of their previous interactions, searching through her memory for any personal vendetta he might have against bluebells. And then, suddenly, it comes to her: Pippa. The young girl whose picture he still carries in his wallet, the heavy body he pulled from the water. The case he almost died for.
"They make you think of Pippa," she says. It isn't a question -- not exactly -- but she hopes he gets it, hopes he'll see both the sympathy and the yearning to understand wrapped up in it.
"I know I've been... an arsehole, lately," he says, pausing to roll his eyes when she lets out a snort of laughter. "I am sorry. Believe it or not, this is one of my better years. Dealing with it, I mean."
"How much longer are you going to keep punishing yourself for her, Hardy? You solved the case, you got the killer."
She grasps his hand where it's laying on his thigh and squeezes slightly, hoping like hell he believes her. She's never known anybody that shoulders grief and guilt like him, that wears it as a second armor.
"You solved the case," he says, moving his body so that he faces her. "I couldn't have done it without you."
He's said a variation of this to her before -- one day, years and years ago, amongst boxes with a taxi waiting outside -- but somehow, this feels different. She sees the brokenness in it, in him, and something else too... A longing for something, almost.
When she moves forward, knocking her knees against his own, she tries not to read too much into it.
She releases his hand so that she can grasp his face, lets her thumbs trace his delicate bone structure, delighted by the slight scratchiness of his beard. And then, seemingly without any prior thought, she kisses him. It's soft -- quick -- just a small pressing of the lips, but it is enough.
She kisses him in the spring.
The summer brings record-breaking heat to the whole of Dorset. Their relationship blooms.
They are -- mostly -- public about the whole thing, non-traditional as their relationship may be. They tell their children early, at Miller's insistence, and end up spending most weekends as a kind of ersatz family. Daisy takes great pride in having two boys to watch, to boss around. Tom is thrilled by her video game collection, and Fred loves the extra attention.
At night they lay beneath the fan, on top of the covers, too hot for any real closeness. She tells him secrets in the dark, stories from her wild, wild youth. She doesn't talk about Joe, or her years spent married, instead favoring stories of the cigarettes she smoked behind the local chippy as a teen, the boys she kissed on the pier. He counts her freckles, licks beads of sweat as they travel down her back.
He tells her stories, too, occasionally. She pieces together his childhood from tidbits of information given at night; a father that didn't love him enough, a lonely boy that only found comfort in books. These stories provoke a fierce protectiveness in her, as if she could retroactively provide him with enough love. They don't talk much about feelings - love, or otherwise -- though. Instead, she holds him a little tighter.
********
Sometime in late August the heat breaks. They venture out to the pier more, the weather just warm enough to crave ice cream, but mild enough for the kind of affection she now constantly craves from him. The summer had heated everything up; his affection is delicious, and she revels in it.
As they walk down the pier, ninety-nines in hand, she can't help but smile. How had they gotten here?
“Wow,” she says. “This is the second ninety-nine you’ve bought me this week. You must really fancy me, Hardy.”
She’s smirking at him now, bumping her shoulder against his as they navigate the crowd.
He grins down at here, his lips wet and glistening from the ice cream. “Mmm. Might even call it love,” he says.
She sputters, coming to a halt beside him. He had said it casually enough, as if declarations of love were an every day occurrence between the two of them. It's so typical of him, to talk of love on some average day in August, when she's sweaty and frizzy and completely fucking unprepared.
He comes to a stop beside her, his face coloring a bit at her silence, at the look of utter shock on her face.
"Alright, Ellie?" He asks, clearly trying to give her an out.
"Yeah," she says, all false-brightness. "Everything's fine."
He claps her hand in his own, and they walk on, two people in a sea of strangers.
*********
(He doesn’t bring it up again until later that night.
In bed, beneath the oscillating fan, he snakes an arm around her waist and whispers: “I meant what I said. Earlier.”
She isn’t sure he’s aware that she’s awake, so she stays still, steadies her breathing and doesn’t say a word. She feels him press a soft kiss to the back of her neck, and waits for him to fall asleep, for the arm around her waist to go limp.
She doesn’t sleep that night, instead quietly reveling in the feeling of being loved.
He loves her.)
Hardy and Daisy move in with Ellie and the boys during the fall. It's chaotic, at first, and probably much too soon. Her boys are slow to adjust to the two new people in their house, not to mention the decidedly female direction every dinner conversation now takes. Some days she wakes to bickering teens in the kitchen, a grumpy Scot hunched over files, and wonders, briefly, if she's lost all of her sense.
But, of course, their new set-up has all kinds of bonuses, not the least of which is her new sleeping arrangement.
She shares a bed again, gets fucked semi-regularly. These are the things she had convinced herself she'd spend the rest of her life without. She is, for once, thrilled to be wrong.
Ellie luxuriates in the turning of the weather, wrapping herself tightly around Hardy at the start of night, clinging to his warmth.
Yes, she thinks, this new arrangement suits them quite well.
***
It is a week before Halloween, and Fred is demanding to carve pumpkins. With their oldest two out, Hardy resigns himself to the task, patiently listening to Fred's endless babbling on the way to the shop. After careful deliberation they settle on two of the largest pumpkins Tesco has on display, and Hardy has to fight off laughter the whole drive back to Ellie's flat -- back home -- at how ridiculous wee Fred looks, dwarfed by bright orange pumpkins in the backseat of the car.
He spreads newspapers across the counter and hoists Fred up onto a barstool, smiling to himself over the bright, happy giggles coming from the young boy. They spend what seems like hours pulling seeds from the pumpkins, the sticky, pulpy mess clinging to their fingers. It's nice, in a way. It reminds him of another life, with another child. He lets Fred draw silly faces on the pumpkins in sharpie, and then goes about carving, listening to Fred talk about his costume.
Somewhere in the middle of it all, Ellie -- previously at the station, completing old paperwork -- comes home.
"Well, well," she says. "Looks like somebody managed to get grumpy Hardy in the holiday spirit after all."
She walks around the kitchen counter, wrinkling her nose slightly at the mess. She kisses Fred's cheek, then Hardy's, and moves to sit a comfortable distance from the mess.
"Very funny," he says, rolling his eyes at her.
Hardy continues carving, occasionally letting Fred assist under careful supervision, when he becomes acutely aware that he is being watched.
"What's up?" He asks, turning his head slightly to get a better look at her.
"You're so good with him," she observes, clearly smitten.
"I have done this before, you know," he says, feigning annoyance. "It's just been a while."
He ruffles Fred's hair a bit, smiling down at the young boy before he goes about the arduous task of cleaning sticky pumpkin off Fred's hands. They're quite the pair, her boys. She snaps a few pictures on her phone, sending them off to Tom and Daisy with a quick Wish you were here! text.
"I know. It's just... nice to see you with a child." She pauses for a beat, momentarily startled by the buzzing of her phone, alerting her of Tom and Daisy's replies. "Fatherhood looks good on you," she adds, a touch embarrassed.
He stops mid-cleanup to look at her, his face a mixture of shyness and -- something rarer still -- happiness. This thing between them has surprised them both at every turn. That he should be here, in her kitchen, carving silly pumpkins with her youngest boy, is something so profoundly odd that she finds she cannot contemplate it.
Coming home with him, to their children, is her most favourite part of any day. Even with the bickering, and the mess, it is enough to simply be there, with them. With all of them. This messy, blended family.
This year they are hit with an early snowfall. She takes Daisy to the shops to buy presents for the boys, the two of them bundled in warm, thick wool. They laugh over potential gag gifts, matching jammies for Tom and Fred, a bright, floral top for Hardy. It's like having a daughter, she thinks.
The early portion of her relationship with Hardy was intense, all-consuming. She had never really given herself the time to consider what having Daisy in her life would be like, how nice it would be to have another female traipsing about the house.
Ellie loves her fiercely.
************
Later that night they return to a house thoroughly decorated, tinsel and bright lights carefully strewn about the living room.
Hardy sits on the couch alone, reading an old, wrinkled paperback. The boys are sequestered in their rooms for the night, exhausted from a day full of decorating. Daisy heads up to hers shortly after, placing light kisses on both Hardy and Ellie's cheeks.
Ellie drops her bags on the floor and plops down on the couch beside him, her head leaning against his shoulder.
"Well," he says. "How was it?"
She sighs against him, burrowing her head further against his chest.
"Good. Great, actually. She's such a wonderful girl, Hardy. Almost can't believe you raised her."
He huffs out a laugh. "Well, I had some help. But I meant... how was shopping. Did you get me anything good?"
"You knob," she says, jabbing her elbow into his side. "I was trying to compliment your parenting skills. Just for that, you don't get to open any of your presents until Christmas."
"Any?" He asks, situating himself so that he's looking down at her. "What does that mean, exactly? Were there things I might get to open earlier?"
He is leering at her now, a knowing smile on his face.
"Maybe," she says, batting her eyes at him. "You might need to work on your manners first, though."
"Ah, I see," he says. "In that case, let me re-phrase the question: may I open one of my presents early?"
She laughs, small crinkles forming at the corners of her eyes.
"Give me your hand," she says.
She lifts his hand up, placing a quick kiss to his palm before pushing it down, moving it beneath the waistband of her pants.
"This present," she says, situating herself closer to him, kissing the corner of his mouth, "Requires some active participation."
He kisses her firmly now, inching his hand further down her pants.
"Mmm," he says. "My favourite kind of present."
Her laugh changes to a moan as he finds his target, and she allows herself to be pushed further down the couch.
All through the house it is quiet, nothing but the sound of heavy breathing, and the soft patter of snow against the glass outside.
He is her favourite gift of all time.