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Alec Hardy greets Ellie Miller, as she steps into his office for the first time that morning, with the words, “I’m fine.”
“That’s nice,” she says, folding her arms across her chest and propping herself against the doorframe for what is sure to be an enlightening conversation. “Reassuring, that.”
Up until this moment, Hardy has had his head bowed over a pile of paperwork. He raises it now, eyes refocusing over the frames of his glasses. Ellie reckons she has seen corpses that looked less dead beat. His eyes are hollow and the fragile skin around them is colored a bruise-y purple. The rest of his face is pale as chalk and somehow even more haggard than usual. His hair hasn’t even been given its customary combing through of fingers: it’s disheveled on one side and flattened by sleep on the other.
“With all due respect, sir, you look like shit.”
He snorts. “That’s with respect?”
“ Due respect,” she reiterates. She can feel the trace of a smirk on her lips. She’s actually quite worried at the state of him, and the gentle ribbing makes her feel like she’s got more of a handle on the situation than she actually has. Besides, unguarded concern spooks Hardy, and he’s already on the defensive.
“Of course,” he rolls his eyes and turns back to his paperwork, head supported by his hand, which worries at a spot above his left eyebrow as if trying to massage away a headache.
Ellie doesn’t budge from her spot in the doorway, patiently waiting for re-acknowledgement. It doesn’t take long.
“Did you have a question?”
“I wanted to know what’s on the agenda today, sir. Serial killer? Terrorist threat?” She watches him process the inquiry, his face wrinkling in irritated confusion.
“What? No. What are you nattering about, Miller?”
“I just thought that might explain why you’re here today, instead of at home in bed?”
“I told you, I’m fine.” He coughs discreetly into his collar.
“Oh come on , Hardy. You can’t believe you’ve got anyone fooled by this.”
“No one else’s mentioned anything.” He’s clearly trying very hard to focus on his work instead of her, and to keep his head down and his face out of her line of sight.
“That’s because they all think you look like shit anyways! But okay then, you can’t believe this is actually helping anyone. You’ll infect everyone else, and how much work are you really getting done?” She strides to stand behind his desk and look over his shoulder. She’s near enough that she can feel heat radiating off him. Peering down at the pile of papers in front of him, she sees that he’s just about managed to add his signature to one of them. “How long have you been at this?”
There is a silence long enough that she can tell he’s looking for a loophole. “Sincehalfpast,” he tries to slide it past her as one word, and says it more to his shirtfront than to her or anyone else.
“Half past eight? It’s a quarter after nine now.”
“Have you got a point you’d like to make?”
“You’ve gotten down nine letters in forty-five minutes? That’s five minutes per letter.”
“It’s not five minutes per letter,” he snaps, removing his glasses and letting them fall to his desk. He pinches the bridge of his nose, screwing his face up as he does so. “I had to read the bloody thing first, didn’t I?”
“You’re not really making a strong argument for yourself. Let me feel your forehead.”
He ducks out of the way with a warning growl of “Stop it,” followed by, “I’m not Tom or Wee Fred.”
“No, you’re a sight harder to deal with than my four year old.” She manages to wrangle him upright and brush his hair back from his forehead. She’s long wanted to touch his hair, probably because she knows he would never allow it under normal circumstances. That, and she’s always itching to get it out of his eyes. It feels surprisingly close to what she’s imagined: soft and fine, but thick. And at the moment, just barely damp with perspiration. She lays a hand against his forehead and the fact that he’s burning up is somehow less alarming than the way his eyes slip closed as though the coolness of her touch is a relief.
“Oh God, you’re really warm. When did this start?”
He’s contemplating telling her once more that he’s fine. She senses it, and decides to head him off at the pass: “And if you tell me you aren’t ill then so help me I will—“ she can’t actually think of a suitable threat. He is, nonetheless, defeated.
“Yesterday, after dinner. I don’t remember when.”
“Not after dinner, because you didn’t eat dinner,” she corrects as a point of order. “I offered you half of mine, you wouldn’t take it. And if you were ill yesterday afternoon, why not go home? And bloody hell, why not call out today?”
“Because I’m needed here.”
“Right. The great Alec Hardy, Savior of the Wessex police. Come off it, we’ve got nothing on that a half-competent DS couldn’t handle.”
“Are you volunteering yourself?”
“I’m more than half-competent. And I’ll have to spend the day minding you, now.”
“Minding me?” He splutters, “What do you mean, minding me?”
“Well you obviously can’t be relied on to do it yourself, so come on. I’m taking you home.”
“Miller—“
“Up!” She orders, and he slides his chair back with a sigh. He rubs blearily at his eyes, snatches up his glasses and drops them into his shirt pocket, then makes a move to stand.
Ellie sees it happen. He takes one step away from his desk and then grabs at the edge of it with a white-knuckled hand and threatens to topple like a house of cards. She lunges for him and manages to catch him on the way to the ground, ducking to sling his arm around her shoulders. God, he’s light , she thinks. With her arm wrapped around him she thinks she can feel ribs. “Got you,” she says. “I’ve got you.”
He’s practically ragdoll limp, but he insists on putting forth a token argument that he’s alright and can make it on his own.
“You almost dropped,” she reminds him, “I saw it. I’m not letting you get a concussion on top of the flu.”
“I haven’t got—“
“We had two DCs leave early with it last week, don’t you remember?”
“I—“ he definitely doesn’t. Then again, he doesn’t look like he remembers his own name at the moment.
“You probably caught it from one of them. Which is exactly why you shouldn’t be here, last thing we need is the whole force calling out.”
He also desperately needs the rest, but she doesn’t say that. The fact that he made it to work at all is either a minor miracle or an act of extreme hubris—the two are often indistinguishable with Alec Hardy.
She has to all but pilot him to her car. In spite of his insistence that she’s being ridiculous, he leans heavily onto her as he walks, his height and ungainly limbs making it difficult to support him. He stumbles once and they both come dangerously close to hitting the ground before she rights them. On the way out of the building they are passed by Brian, who stops in his tracks and raises an eyebrow in silent inquiry. Ellie shoots him a look that she hopes tells him not to say a word. He must get the message, because he holds the door open for them, but provides no commentary.
Getting Alec into the car is a bit like folding origami, but she manages. Once they’re both buckled in she cranks up the heat because he’s shivering. They get several kilometers down the road before Alec registers any confusion. He looks out the window, his brow furrowing as he tries to process what he’s seeing.
“This isn’t the way to my house.”
“I said I was taking you home, I didn’t say I was taking you to your home.”
“Why the hell—?”
“Because I don’t trust you,” she tells him simply.
“So you’re saying you’ll investigate murders with me, but you don’t trust me to take care of myself when I’m ill?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” she grins in spite of herself, “And for the record, you just admitted that you’re ill.”
That shuts him up instantly.
Alec has dozed off by the time they arrive at Ellie’s. He takes some rousing, and more assistance getting into the house. Ellie’s plan to get him into the guest room on the second floor has long since disintegrated, so since the boys aren’t due back from school for several hours, she plants him on the couch instead. He persists in telling her he’s not that ill, really, until the thermometer reads thirty-nine degrees.
“I’m going to get you some paracetamol,” she tells him, after bundling him up in a blanket and threatening him if he moves.
“Stop fussing,” he tells her, when she returns. But he’s drowsy and his hair is mussed, and it’s hard to take him seriously.
“Stop arguing and stop working yourself into the ground and maybe I won’t need to fuss,” she suggests, offering him the pills. To her slight alarm he dry swallows them before she has the chance to give him the glass of water in her other hand. “Drink,” she orders when that sets him coughing. He does as instructed, downing half of the contents in the glass and then setting it aside with shaking hands.
“Happy?” He demands.
“I will be, once you shut up and get some rest.”
“Will that shut you up too?”
“The longer you nap, the less you’ll hear of me. Stands to reason, doesn’t it?”
He considers this, then says, “Yeah, fine.”
Later on, she doesn’t bring up the fact that it took him all of 90 seconds to doze off once more. It’s fine, she thinks, to let some things go unspoken.