Work Text:
It was a rare occasion that Miller showed up looking like she’d had less sleep than he had. Today was one of those occasions.
Normally he would have been worried. The case was taking its toll on everyone. After the Sandbrook case, he’d seen how far she could fall into her work and he was on the lookout for signs that she was struggling. So far, she had been as resilient as ever.
That was until that morning, however, when Miller had dragged herself into work, large coffee in hand, and only managed a vaguely cheerful greeting to her colleagues.
He would have been concerned if hadn’t already suspected the cause.
As he crossed the road, he spotted her sat on the wall by the beach, squinting although it hadn’t been nearly as bright out as it had been the rest of the week. He tamped down a smirk, knowing she thought she could have slipped this by him.
“Got lunch,” he said, holding up a carrier bag and sitting next to her.
She eyed the bag wearily, her eyes going wide when she saw him pull out a packaged salad.
“Don’t panic. That’s mine.” He noted the way the tips of her eyes went red. “I know better than to try and feed you anything green.”
He pulled out a bottle of water and passed it to her.
“You’re a lifesaver!” She grabbed the bottle off him and he watched in amusement as she twisted the top off to drink nearly half of it in one go.
“Beth’s birthday was Tuesday, wasn’t it?” He’d asked the question as innocently as possible but still had to look to a group of gulls further down the road. There was no doubt in his mind that Miller’s eyes were on him.
“Was only meant to go over for dinner. Ended up sharing a couple of bottles of wine between us. Like you’ve never shown up to work worse for wear,” she grumbled before taking another swig of water.
“Worse for wear...” he said, rummaging in his shopping bag again. “Medically unfit for duty...”
He found what he was looking for and held it out to her.
Miller looked from the item in his hand, back to his face and then at his hand once again. “You bought me a scotch egg.”
“Thought you liked them?” His confidence wavered. They hadn’t worked together in a couple of years, but he thought he could remember everything about Ellie Miller, from her visually painful choice in outdoor wear to her artery damaging diet. These lapses sent him back to the day he stood by a taxi, without a plan, a place to live and the piece of his heart he’d left behind.
“They’re my favourite,” she told him. She took it from him as though it were a Fabergé egg and unwrapped it carefully so as not to be covered in crumbs. “How did you know?”
Hardy cleared his throat. Remembering all the little things that made Ellie Miller the infuriating and incredible person she was was one thing, but admitting that he had to her face was quite another. “About the hangover?”
Miller chewed her lip. He held his breath, waiting for her to contradict him and call him on his obvious distraction. “I didn’t think I looked too bad.”
She took a huge bite out of the scotch egg and licked the crumbs from her lips. Hardy tried not to focus on that too much.
“It was more the text that gave you away.”
“Text?” she said, still focused on her lunch.
Hardy pulled his phone out of his pocket and brought up his messages. “Just before three, you sent this.”
He held it out for her to read.
“ Why j? ” she read. “I don’t remember sending that. Sure it was me?”
“Your number.”
She shrugged. “Must’ve been a mistake.”
Ripping open the plastic covering his food and unfolding the ridiculous excuse for a fork it came with, Hardy tried not to let his disappointment show.
It was stupid, really, to believe that maybe she had got into bed in the early hours of the morning and thought of him. It was more often than not that he lay awake, thinking of her. It had been no different that morning. He had gone through every possible way that text would have ended if had been completed and was still no closer to working out what she could have been planning to say.
Hardy picked at his salad and eyed the seagulls that were approaching him. He’d never known a species so intent on stealing food and, unlike most, they were big enough to succeed. Trying to appear as unfazed as Miller, he pulled his belongings closer to him, noticing a lump in the carrier bag as he did.
“Oh, nearly forgot,” he said as he handed the bag to Miller. “Got you dessert as well.”
Having already inhaled her scotch egg, Miller was able to take the bag from him. He watched with amusement as she peered into it before diving in with an, “ooh!”
She looked at the KitKat as if she couldn’t believe it was real before tearing the wrapper open and snapping a finger off.
“Bloody love you sometimes,” she told him through a mouth of chocolate and biscuit.
Hardy knew he was staring at her, but he couldn’t seem to move.
Those words had been said to him in daydreams and nightmares for years now. Sometimes she was smiling, others she was screaming. In all of them though, she’d been looking at him.
On this windy day, sat on a cold wall in reality, she’d barely even acknowledged what she had said, let alone him.
He stabbed his salad. Life had never been fair to him. It was foolish of him to think it would start after all these years.
His thoughts wandered miserably in circles as they ate, until he yawned and nearly dropped his food. Miller chuckled and something about how beautiful she looked smiling at him rubbed the wrong way.
“It’s your fault I’m tired,” he snapped. “Waking me up in the middle of the night. Why were you texting me at that time anyway?”
“I don’t know!”
Hardy had never been great with women, but he was good at his job. He knew when someone was withholding something from him, especially someone he’d spent as much time with as Ellie Miller.
He froze. She’d never kept anything from him before. If she didn’t want to talk about something she’d be vague in a tone that shut down any follow up questions. This denial and avoiding his eye was something he’d never seen.
For one moment, one crazy moment, Hardy wondered if she did know, if he had been right and everything he wanted was closer than he had ever dreamed.
A voice in the back of his head reminded him that he was terrible at reading signals, but he’d never listened to that voice before.
“Miller, why-”
“Shit. Is that him?” She nodded across the street at a man emerging from a bookies. Hardy had only seen his face in photographs before.
Without another word, they hastily shoved what remained of their lunch into coat pockets and bags and crossed the road. Hardy knew his question and most likely the answer, whatever it was going to be, would be left on the sea wall.