Work Text:
Ellie pulled the sleeves of her coat over her hands as the evening chill set in. She had done several stupid things without thinking of the consequences in her time, but she feared tonight might even top the time she ran away from home when she was seven.
It had only taken her half an hour of walking around in the rain with her school bag to realise she’d made a mistake that night. She’d already been sat in a deckchair outside a cliffside house for twice as long as that. Going home and hoping no one saw her was looking more and more appealing by the second.
Every time she considered getting up and going, she remembered how the whirlwind of thoughts in her head had been getting to her. How while she was doubting every little thing, she was a liability to the case she was trying so hard to crack.
How there was no way she could work out what it was she was feeling when she was so consumed by doubt.
Her patience was rewarded only ten minutes later when she saw Hardy lumbering down the path to his house. He paused briefly when he first saw her but continued his journey as though there was nothing amiss.
“Tom tell you where I live then?” He stopped in front of her and pulled his key out of his pocket.
“Yeah. Thanks for giving him his football back.”
“Not sure how he was playing around here anyway.”
There was an awkward silence, Hardy obviously waiting for her to explain why she was waiting outside his house for him. The problem was Ellie wasn’t sure she could put it into words.
“Why do you have a deckchair?” she asked instead.
Hardy shrugged. “Daisy bought it. House warming present. Said it’d be good for me to get fresh air sometimes.”
The casual way he said it more than anything made the acidic taste of her worries overwhelm her and the thoughts she’d wanted to finalise before revealing come tumbling out.
“I didn’t know she’d come to Broadchurch.”
“She stays here some weekends.”
“I didn’t even know you were talking.” She didn’t mean for it to sound so much like an accusation but she was so tired. Since the case had fallen to her and Hardy had appeared out of the blue she had been in freefall. Nothing was safe and nothing was certain. The only thing she could count on was Hardy and even he had been keeping secrets.
He met her eye steadily and she thought that maybe he understood.
“You didn’t ask,” he said quietly.
She wanted to tell him she had wanted to, but hadn’t known if she was allowed. Every attempt previously had been met with a sarcastic comment and soon enough she stopped trying. Although, now she thought about it, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d tried to reach out to him.
It wasn’t fair how her life was dragged out in front of him without her say so, while he could still hide his behind a thin veil of solitude. It was easy to forget that while she had no secrets left to keep from Hardy, he only ever told what he needed to.
She trusted him completely because she had to.
The inequality that had been at the root of their relationship since they’d met, when she’d been focussed on the body of a boy she had known and loved while he was professionally detached, made her want to scream, but she couldn’t. Hardy had never asked to be in the front row of the shit show her life had become. It would be unfair to take it out on him, no matter how much she wanted to.
She had just hoped that, after all of this time and with everything going on, he would have let her in.
“I’m glad.” She had a stab at smiling but she could feel how in crumbled before it really started. “It’s good.”
He saw through her immediately. Again, he was staring at her, waiting for her to explain why she was so upset. Ellie kept her mouth shut, determined to keep a part of her away from him.
“Have you eaten?” he asked, unlocking the front door.
“You don’t have to baby me,” she snapped. The unsaid “anymore” hung in the air between them. There was no doubt in her mind that she would have made it through everything without him, but she had stopped denying it would have been harder if he hadn’t focussed her and given his silent support.
Hardy rolled his eyes and spotted the bottle of wine sat beside her that she’d nearly forgotten about. “You want me to get some glasses or are you okay with a straw?”
“Knob.”
The sounds of Hardy pottering around in his kitchen were almost entirely masked by the waves crashing against the cliffs next to them. Not for the first time, Ellie wondered why a man scared of water would choose to live so close to it.
When he emerged from his house, Hardy picked up the bottle, poured two glasses of wine and handed one to her. He sat heavily down in the doorway with his socked feet on his patio and took a sip of his drink.
“Thanks for the housewarming present.”
“Didn’t say it was yours.” Ellie mock-glared at him over the rim of her glass and was surprised when he smiled.
They drank in silence, listening to the sounds of the sea and wildlife around them. As she watched the fruit bats fly overhead, Ellie was able to calm down a little. “How does Daisy like your little hideaway?”
“She likes it. I think,” Hardy replied. “It’s hard to tell. She hasn’t told me she hates it here outright.”
“No chance of her becoming a Broadchurch regular, then?”
Hardy snorted. “Not until I get better wi-fi.”
Ellie laughed and wondered why she was so hesitant to dig into what had happened to Hardy since they had parted ways. The man she was looking at now, shirt sleeves haphazardly rolled up and tie discarded, was different to the one she had known before. He was lighter somehow. His improved health had done nothing for his personal presentation, but he was less defensive now. These glimpses of him almost happy had her wishing she had known him before Sandbrook.
“The boys with Lucy?” Hardy asked after a while.
“Beth,” she corrected. “Everyone’s been offering to babysit them though. It’s been a godsend with all this over time.”
Hardy hummed in agreement. “Is this a work visit then?”
“Yeah. No. I don’t...” Ellie took too big a gulp of wine and nearly choked on it. “I was in the office but I needed a break. Came here.”
“You okay?”
Her natural reaction was to say she was fine and maybe tell him to piss off while she was at it. The words caught in her throat, however, and she had to put her glass down on the patio.
“I thought Danny would be the worst case I’d ever investigate,” she said, playing with her sleeve. “And it was. Even when we had a lead it wasn’t a victory. And then...” She laughed humourlessly.
She looked at Hardy and hoped he understood what she was trying to say. He nodded, his eyes reflecting the moonlight and her misery.
“That was supposed to be it. But I keep reading those statements and I can’t imagine...” She broke off when her voice choked up. “And going over the evidence. She has to live with this for the rest of her life and… I don’t know anymore.”
“You have to focus on the result,” Hardy said. It sounded like all of his other platitudes but the strain in his voice made her pay attention. “We can’t get caught up in everything else.”
Though she was his boss, Ellie would have been lying if she said she still didn’t view Hardy as a mentor. In that moment though, he didn’t look like her old boss, but a man questioning his view on society as much as she was. She remembered how he’d guided her through the station after he’d told her about Joe, how Beth was never treated with the same suspicion as Mark, how he’d been so blind to Claire’s manipulation. He could barely look after himself, but would drop everything for a damsel in distress.
This case was getting to him as much as it was her.
“How can someone do that to another person?” she asked, her voice tight.
Hardy shook his head. “I don’t know.”
The hopelessness she saw written into his features was too much and Ellie looked away. A lump formed in her throat as she tried to separate her emotions from the facts. It was no use.
She’d never been good at detaching herself from these things and before she met Hardy she considered it a strength. Now she knew the dire consequences and she still couldn’t do it.
Tears were falling before she could stop them. She tried to surreptitiously wipe them, but a sniffle gave her away.
“Miller?”
“‘M’fine.”
Rejecting Hardy came as naturally as breathing. If she could just pull herself together then she knew he’d leave her alone.
Tonight, however, Hardy decided to stop playing by the rules they set for themselves years before.
“No, you’re not. Look, Ellie, I-” He gave up on words and pulled gently on her coat sleeve.
Ellie surprised herself by complying, sitting next to him on the step. After a beat, he wrapped his arms around her and she gladly sank into his embrace. She tried valiantly to keep her crying to a minimum, but Hardy’s unflinching acceptance of all her ugliest emotions had cracked the dam that had been holding them back.
He didn’t try to soothe her with words, knowing that it would be futile, but held her tightly. For the first time in years Ellie felt safe. Protected.
She closed her eyes and tried to hold onto the warm feeling. If only she could stay in this quiet moment, where she wasn’t as alone as she had become too good at pretending she wasn’t.
It was exhausting, lying to everyone, especially herself.
Ellie decided to pretend this was normal, that this cool night was typical of her life. Fred was upstairs, having fallen asleep long ago. Tom was on his X-Box, a thousand excuses to stay up later already planned out. She was in the arms of the man she possibly loved. It didn’t have to be so hard.
Five minutes, she promised herself. Five minutes of honesty.
She wanted this and she wanted this with him. There was no need to worry about being his boss or him moving away again. There were no long dead rumours to resurrect. There was no doubt of him wanting it all too.
There was Ellie and there was Hardy. Together they were happy.
Once her five minutes were over, she sat up straight and met his gaze unapologetically. She had no idea how to read what little she could see of his face.
“Better?” he whispered.
“Yeah. I should go. Collect the boys.”
“‘Course.”
Neither of them moved.
“Thanks.” Ellie used the grip she still had on his shirt to lean up and kiss him on the cheek.
Without another a word or waiting for a response, she stood and walked away.
She found the small torch she always kept in her coat pocket to guide her along the hill path. With each step, she rebuilt the wall she had around her heart and put every daydream she’d entertained behind it. As she reached the top, she turned around and saw the outline of Hardy on his patio, backlit by the light of his kitchen. There was no chance of discerning his expression but just feeling his eyes on her was enough to make her breath catch.
She turned her back on him and wondered how safe her last remaining secret was.