Chapter Text
Sometime around noon, Hardy forced himself out of Paul’s bed. By his best estimate, Paul had gotten up to get on with his day at around 9:30. His movement, and the loss of the cocoon of warmth and affection he’d constructed around Hardy in the form of a solid presence firmly against his back, as well as the thick quilt spread over the two of them, had been enough to stir him from slumber. He was still tired enough he hadn’t needed the encouragement from Paul to go back to sleep. A lack of sleep over the past several weeks, combined with the emotional toll the specifics of the case had taken on him, had Hardy back asleep again almost immediately for a precious few more hours.
Hardy rolled onto his back and rubbed his face. He listened, to see if he could detect whether Paul was still in the house, or had left to run the errands he’d mentioned earlier that morning. Initially, he hoped the latter was the case. Then he could leave, lock up the house, and go back to Broadchurch. He felt okay enough to stuff the darkness and trauma back where he felt it belonged, in hope that it wouldn’t resurface again any time soon. Despite the shame of Paul seeing him so vulnerable again, a larger part of him actually hoped Paul was still home. Truthfully, he didn’t want to leave yet.
“So soppy,” Hardy whispered aloud, covering his eyes with his hand once he realized how badly he didn't want to be alone. What he wanted most was to walk out into the living room, drag Paul back to bed with him, and go back to how they were cuddled together just a few hours earlier. By the afternoon, the sense that he’d been in bed all day would take over and get him up and moving, trying to avoid that vaguely sickly sensation of lying down for too long. On the first day off after a difficult case, Hardy often ended up in bed longer than he’d ever stay under normal conditions, both catching up on the sleep he’d lost, but also mentally exhausted after the adrenaline dump from reaching a sudden end of the thing that had been consuming him for the last several weeks, potentially months. Wandering out of the bedroom with nothing particularly pressing to do, after noon, always left him with a heaviness in his head and an overall body sensitivity not unlike the way he felt just before getting ill. Although, Hardy did wonder if that feeling was purely psychological, and might be mitigated if he were staying in bed with someone. He wasn’t opposed to testing that theory if Paul could rejoin him. Regardless of the source being more mental or physical, he felt some of the achiness beginning to set in already as soon as he stood up.
Hardy stretched, shivering. He eyed the dresser, wondering if it would be weird for him to borrow a jumper. Having gone to Paul’s entirely on impulse and totally unprepared, he was already wearing Paul’s t-shirt and a pair of pyjama bottoms, he didn’t have any warmer clothes of his own with him. Hardy shuffled out of the bedroom, deciding it was still strange to rifle through another man’s drawers, even under the circumstances.
Seeing Paul sitting at the table helped to lift some of the achy discomfort. Hardy sat down across from him, just as he had earlier that morning. He wrapped his arms around his torso, still feeling chilled.
Paul looked up. “Let me get you a jumper,” he said, getting up before Hardy could refuse.
Hardy yawned and rubbed his goose-fleshed forearms, willing away his lingering exhaustion. Paul returned, handing him a maroon jumper. Hardy pulled it over his head. "Thank you,” he murmured. Alec slouched in his chair, still feeling drained.
Paul put a hand on his back. “You look like you could use some more sleep,” he noted.
Hardy shook his head. “No, getting up is good. Can’t hang around, wallowing,” he sighed.
“There’s a difference between wallowing and caring for yourself. If you’d gone home and spent all day counting the cracks in your ceiling, that would be wallowing. You’re here, you made a conscious effort to do something to make yourself feel better. That’s taking care of yourself,” Paul stacked up the papers on the table, and set them aside. He reached across to take Hardy’s hand. “That this, coming here, is how you chose to do that, means more to me than anything you could say. Words vs deeds, and all.”
“I’m not sure I believe that,” Hardy looked down at their hands.
“But you don’t feel worse, do you?” Paul asked. He brushed his thumb across the top of Hardy’s knuckles. “Look, in the past, if I was in your place, this is where I’d go home and pour vodka on all the pain. That’s wallowing. For me now, often it’s prayer. But I could just as easily show up on your doorstep at this point, because I know you’ll make me feel better too.”
Hardy sighed. He was starting to want to go lie back down. “I don’t really want to talk,” he started, pulling his hand back when he shivered again. This was the argument for going back to Broadchurch. The walls that had rebuilt themselves while he slept weren’t quite as solid as he’d like, and Paul’s insistence in talking through feelings only threatened to knock them back down again.
Paul gave him a pained look. “I have a hunch you’d feel better if we spent the rest of the day on the sofa together. I do need to run out for a couple hours, though. And food,” Paul got up and began getting ready to leave. “I really hope you’ll still be here when I come back, if you’re not, lock up, and I’ll call you tonight?”
Hardy sighed. “You could have gone out while I was asleep, I don’t need minding.”
Paul glared at him. “This is why Ellie calls you a knob. I know that. For me, I didn’t want you to wake up and be alone. I want to be with you, it isn’t just something that I feel like I have to do for you, though I do think it’s what you need or else you wouldn’t have driven out here last night. It makes me feel better, too, not being alone,” he tried to explain.
“Right. I understand. This is why when you’re running around like a headless chicken this Christmas, I want to be here to help with whatever I can.”
Paul smiled at him. “I’ll come up with some things, I’m not sure if repairing a few of the older pageant props is within your skill set.”
“I can swing a hammer,” Hardy rolled his eyes. “Or I can,” he got up and stood near Paul. Paul stood, putting his arms around Hardy’s waist. “Just be here, with you. In bed, on the sofa, clothes on,” he gave Paul a pitifully awkward smirk. “Clothes off, if you’re in the mood,” he added in a nervous voice.
Paul grinned. “I like where your mind is going, if you’re feeling up to it later, though.”
Hardy nodded. “Seems unlikely,” he murmured.
“That’a perfectly fine, I’m never going to pressure you, that’s an awful thing to do,” there was a hint in his voice that made Hardy think he was speaking from experience, and noted that Paul sounded as if he was intentionally stopping short on sharing some unpleasant details. Alec made a mental note to follow up the next time he thought he detected the same hint in Paul’s voice. He was still too worn out for what he imagined would be a heavy conversation, even if it shifted the focus off himself.
Hardy shook his head, “I’ll be here. I won’t leave,” he reiterated. Alec winced internally, scolding himself that this was the best he could muster by way of agreement with Paul that he was right about not wanting to be alone.
Paul squeezed Hardy’s shoulder. He leaned in to give him a kiss. “I love you,” he reminded him.
Hardy nodded. “You too,” he muttered.
“Have a cry if you need to, lie back down, I,” Paul went back across the kitchen and began digging in a drawer near the fridge. “Thought there was an extra key in here, if you wanted to go for a walk, get some fresh air.”
Hardy slunk toward Paul. His body felt stiff and heavy. He leaned against Paul’s back, wrapping his arms around him in an awkward hug. “I appreciate all this.”
“Don’t act like you wouldn’t do everything in your power to try to help me out. I’ve seen you care. I know how much you care about people you love. You hurt if they’re hurting.”
“I’m not that soft,” Hardy murmured into Paul’s neck. It felt like a lie, or an admission that he was so used to hurting that he couldn’t separate out cause.
“I think you may be,” Paul laughed. “I don’t hate it,” he turned, holding Hardy tightly in a hug. “That may be when I figured out I love you,” Paul said. “I said I already found you attractive, but talking over all those months, you’re far more empathetic and I’m not sure, gentle? Caring? That’s when I realized hmm, I think I may actually fancy this bloke.”
“Enough, I get it,” Hardy grunted, rolling his eyes when Paul called him modest, too.
“I do need to go, I’m running late. Tea, rest, find a movie or two for us to watch later,” Paul kissed Hardy goodbye, promising to be back in time to eat an early meal together.
Hardy sat down on the sofa, pulling his mobile out of his pocket. He thought about calling Daisy. He wanted to hear her voice, to just sit and listen to her tell him about her day to take his mind off the low rumbling of anxiety that had begun to build in his gut the moment Paul walked out the door. His thumb circled over her number in his contacts, but he thought better of actually making the call. He wasn’t sure he could handle going to voicemail if she was busy, and he figured she was probably in class. Or having lunch with friends. If he interrupted either of those while he was supposed to be at work, she’d want to know why. Under no circumstances did he want to tell her that he was struggling. Hardy set down his mobile on the coffee table, not wanting to make her worry about him. He turned on the tv, muted it, and got up to take a shower.
***
Paul was home before Hardy woke up. He had nodded off on the sofa after his shower, and was sleeping so soundly that he hadn’t heard him come into the house. He didn’t wake up until Paul woke him, gently rubbing his shoulder and whispering his name once Hardy began to stir.
Hardy grunted a vague sound, sitting up to make space for Paul beside him on the sofa. Paul sat down, encouraging Hardy to lean into him. He put his arms around Hardy, resting his cheek against the top of Hardy’s head until he tilted away to angle for a kiss. Paul rubbed his upper arm while Hardy put his arms around Paul, grappling to be the hugger rather than the hug-ee.
“Here,” Paul shifted his body so Hardy could lie down across his lap, legs draped over the armrest. Paul played with his hair, smiling when he felt Hardy sigh against him. “Why are you watching the telly without sound?” he asked.
Hardy shrugged.
“It’s a thing I’ve noticed you do,” Paul continued.
Hardy tensed, feeling a stab of self-consciousness. “My parents,” he said quietly. “I watched a lot of telly, alone in the flat when I was a child, they hated it. When my da came home,” his voice hitched. “He’d turn it off, say it was too bloody loud, found if I just had the volume off I’d be left alone. You’d be surprised how many things you think are funnier that they really are when you can’t hear the dialogue.”
Paul rested his hand on Hardy’s chest. “That’s bloody depressing.”
“Aye and then my mother would usually make me turn it off anyway,” he snorted.
“Why?”
Hardy shrugged again. “The priest at my first confession told me watching telly wasn’t a sin, that my sin was disobeying my parents and watching it in the first place. I remember being confused,” Hardy shuddered. He felt himself sliding toward tears again. It felt stupid, being sad over something so unimportant. He’d seen enough abused and dead children in his years as a police officer to know that he could have had it so much worse. He shut his eyes, trying to focus on where he was, how far from there he was, and that if he wanted to watch Star Trek or Doctor Who at full volume at either his own house or Paul’s, he’d be able to, had been able to for longer than he’d not been allowed as a child. “Sorry, I’m babbling. Put something on,” he reached for the remote.
“Mine weren’t strict at all,” Paul wrapped his arms tighter around Hardy, pressing his face against the side of his head to offer as many points of contact as he could, until he felt Hardy relax again. “I think that’s the balance, somewhere in the middle between yours overdoing it and mine allowing me to do whatever I wanted. More discipline for me, less for you, would have done us each a world of good.”
Hardy passed the remote behind him. “No, really, you choose, I’ll watch anything,” he signaled he was done talking about both their parents.
Twenty minutes into a movie, Hardy yawned. “How am I still tired,” he groaned.
Paul laughed. “I’m knackered, too,” he said.
“I slept all bloody day,” Hardy reminded him.
“Probably more than you slept all week. You needed it, it only gets harder the older we get,” Paul said.
“Aye, suppose you’re right,” Hardy agreed.
“Sod this movie if we’re both tired.”
Hardy nodded again, following Paul to bed.
“You’d probably feel better in a fresh shirt,” Paul tossed him another tshirt.
“I’m fine,” Hardy began changing anyway. He could see the look on Paul’s face, not taking no for an answer. He tossed the shirt at Paul’s laundry basket in the corner of the room, missing. Paul shoved him back toward the bed before he had a chance to go pick it up.
“I thought you said you were tired,” Hardy kissed him back.
“I am,” Paul rolled over next to him instead of continuing. “I know you’re not in the mood either,” he shot Hardy a wicked smirk. “I’m not going to pressure you.”
Hardy sighed. “I should go back. I really shouldn’t stay the whole weekend.”
“Selfishly, I am going to disagree with that,” Paul once again positioned them so he was square against Hardy’s back, the quilt around the two of them. “I do wish I could keep you here with me a bit longer.”
“Sunday, I’ll be back Sunday,” Hardy mumbled.
“We can do this when you’re not feeling depressed too, you know,” Paul chuckled.
Hardy paused before offering a response, a belated flicker of recognition at noting this was the second time that day Paul had emphasized not pressuring Hardy into having sex. “You’ve said that twice.”
Paul frowned, confused. Hardy clarified that he meant the no pressure part.
Paul sighed. “Another time,” he brushed it off. Hardy waited, silently leaving the door open for Paul to elaborate. Paul didn’t.
“You’re going to agree to this soft, soppy nonsense,” he paused, searching for the right word. “Whenever?” he asked, not convinced.
“If you want me to,” Paul hummed. “I enjoy this too, you know.”
Hardy turned to face Paul. He wrapped himself around Paul’s body, tucking his head against Paul.
“Truth is, I’m used to giving the comfort, but not really accepting it, or being in a position where someone’s offering. Sound familiar?”
“I hate it,” Hardy grunted, quickly clarifying. “I hate needing it,” he murmured. He closed his eyes, letting out a shuddering breath.
“Me too,” Paul said.
“You do?” Hardy tried to sit up to look at him. Paul pulled him against him, running his hands through his hair instead.
“Yeah, I’m not used to it either. Especially as an adult,” he added. Hardy huffed quietly, considering the implication that Paul’s parents had probably hugged him far more frequently as a child than his ever had.
“That feels nice,” Hardy was severely understating how much he enjoyed Paul’s fingers gently massaging his scalp. He shifted his hips so he was lying more comfortably.
“I’m glad,” Paul smiled. “In a way, I’m just doing what I wish I’d had someone do for me when I’ve been at my lowest.”
Hardy snorted. “This is hardly my lowest,” he muttered. Far from it, he thought. He wasn’t actively dying, for starters. “You’ve not told me about yours yet,” he added.
Paul didn’t say anything. With the arm that was still wrapped around Hardy, he gave him a squeeze. “Not now, sleep. There’ll be plenty of time for you to learn about my demons when you’re less busy battling your own.”
***
Alec shivered. He was sitting on the steps outside the church waiting for his mother. He didn’t have a watch, but he estimated that he had been waiting for an hour. His mother had said she’d be back, that she had a quick errand to run, but wasn’t going to allow him to skip confession. The cold concrete made the seat of his trousers feel damp, and he’d checked several times to make sure that he hadn’t actually sat on wet ground. He hadn't wanted to go back inside, worried that if he was still inside when she returned for him, she’d assume he left. She’d done that before, left him behind to find his own way home from school when she’d gone to collect him and a teacher had made him stay inside due to the weather.
The priest nearly tripped over him on the steps, gruffly asking why he was loitering. He told Alec to leave. Alec tried to stammer out an explanation, trying to tell the priest he was Mrs. Hardy’s son, he’d been for confession, but she hadn’t come to take him home yet. The priest didn’t appear to be listening, just told him that confession was over for the day and he’d have to contend with missing it today at his next one. He was gone, and Alec was alone again. It was getting dark. Alec stood, pacing back and forth, trying to stay warm. His fingers and toes were numb. He knew the bus schedule, but he didn’t have money to be able to take the bus home on his own, and he was still afraid of what his mother’s response would be if he were gone when she came back for him. Almost out of nowhere, it began snowing. Large, heavy white flakes fell from the sky and stuck in his hair. Alec sat back down on the top step, in an effort to find some shelter, choosing to keep waiting.
“Alec, Alec,” Paul was shaking him. Or he was shaking. Hardy couldn’t be sure which. Perhaps both. He clawed his way back to the present, aware that he must have been visibly having another nightmare. He felt a residual chill and wrapped Paul’s quilt tightly around himself.
“What’s wrong?” he heard Paul ask. Hardy took a while to answer. His jaw felt tight. He tucked his chin under the covers, moving his mouth in an effort to remind himself he hadn’t actually been outside in the elements for an extended period of time.
“Nothing, I’m fine,” Hardy whispered, pulling his face back out from underneath the blankets.
“Are you cold?” Paul sounded concerned. He was rubbing Hardy’s shoulder through the quilt. Hardy shivered again, despite actually being rather warm. He let out a heavy sigh.
“Just a nightmare,” he stretched out, tossing the covers down to his waist as he rolled over onto his back and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m plenty warm,” he muttered. “Go back to sleep.”
Hardy expected Paul wasn’t going to simply go back to sleep. As per usual, he didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to talk about the specifics of another nightmare, and he certainly didn’t feel like examining why this decades-old memory was haunting him now, twisting itself into something that had him violently shaking in his sleep. In the version of events that resided in Hardy’s conscious memory, his father had come to get him after his mother was unable to do so. It had been dark by the time he showed up. But it wasn’t snowing, although it had been unseasonably cold for September. She’d secretly gone to a doctor’s appointment while he was at the church, and was determined to be too ill to return home that evening. They’d kept her for tests overnight in the hospital, something he pieced together much later, and none of which 11 year old Alec had known about at the time. His parents hadn’t even told him she was sick. All he knew was that she was leaving him at the church, but would be back later. His father was in such a foul mood when he arrived that Alec had been too afraid to ask why he'd been forgotten, or where his mother was for the following 24 hours. Barely a year later, she was gone.
Paul was settling back down next to him, draping an arm across Hardy’s chest. Hardy pressed his palm over his face, grateful that Paul was there, but also wanting to be alone. Everything he’d appreciated about Paul being there for him the first time he’d had seen him have a nightmare, never mind the previous night when he’d shown up late and in tears, told him he would feel better, should open up about this. Years of Tess having given up on getting him to let her in told him that if he did start pulling away, it was only a matter of time before Paul did the same.
Paul was quiet during these internal deliberations. He hadn’t asked to talk about it, hadn’t offered a cup of tea or massage, or even tried to reposition them so he could hold him closer. If Hardy didn’t know better, he might have thought Paul was already asleep again.
“If you don’t want to talk, I understand. I wish you would, I think it helps. I know there are some things you’d like to keep to yourself, and if this needs to be one of them. You’ve opened up a lot recently, I do know how all that feels,” Paul rubbed his side, a thing Hardy noticed he did whenever he was really trying to show he was being sincere.
Hardy opened his eyes and tilted his head off the pillow. He was staring into the top of Paul’s head. He was using Hardy’s chest as a pillow, resting just below his pacemaker. He knew that Paul’s ear so close to his heart couldn’t tell him all that he’d been thinking, but he did wonder how Paul was so quick to get at most of the thoughts he’d been having. It made him want to be contrarian.
“My parents didn’t tell me my mother was ill. A year before she died, she took me to confession and said she’d be back, except she went to an appointment with, her GP or a specialist, I’m still not sure, they never told me anything. I remember assuming she just had to go do the shopping, which I thought was strange enough because I’d never known her to pass on Adoration. Anyway, when I came out, she wasn’t back yet. I waited, it got dark,” Hardy paused to take a breath. He could feel the details of the dream version slipping away.
“It was cold,” Paul filled in that part.
“It wasn’t warm, but they never left me out in the snow til after dark,” he wrapped his left arm around Paul’s back, and scratched his chin. That wasn’t true, he realized, at least not the part about the snow. By January, his mother had been in and out of hospital too many times to keep hiding it from him, and his father had pulled Alec out of school early one day to go visit her during a lengthier stay. Hardy hadn’t considered that this particular visit had looked bleak, he was just glad to be out of school early to go see her. Leaving before the end of the day meant he would get a reprieve from a potential encounter with one of the boys who was constantly trying to pick a fight with him. By the time they’d arrived at the hospital, Alec’s father called a last minute audible and told him to wait outside. He told Alec he didn’t want his mother to be angry he was out of school early. It was snowing, and Alec’s mood soured as he considered why his father had gotten him early then. His father was there for around an hour, and they were home before dark. But Alec had been left outside in the snow, now that he thought about it. He kept that story to himself, trying to pick up the thread where he’d left off.
“You were dreaming about being left by your parents, outside a church in the snow, at night?”
Hardy sighed. “I was dreaming about my mother leaving me outside church. But it wasn’t in the snow, after dark. What actually happened was my father got me, I think it was dark by then, but memories are faulty. You woke me up before anyone came for me, maybe it wasn’t a nightmare. What if you robbed me of a good ending?”
Paul picked up his head, shooting a knowing glance at Hardy. “When was the last time you had a good dream?”
Hardy raised an eyebrow. “I’ve had a few. Recently. You were in those,” his upper lip curled in a sheepish smile.
“Oh, was I?” Paul feigned innocence. He shifted back from Hardy, lying on his side. “What were we doing?”
“You bloody well know exactly what we were doing in them,” Hardy snorted, rolling into his side to face Paul. In the darkness, he forced a grin back when Paul grinned.
“We’ll reenact some of those dreams, sometime, doesn’t have to be today,” Paul gave Hardy a quick kiss.
“I think it’s already tomorrow,” Hardy noted while Paul assured him it didn’t have to be tomorrow either. He turned to his other side, scooting back toward Paul. He was rewarded when Paul wrapped himself around Hardy’s body, nestling his face in his neck. The last thought Hardy had before falling back asleep was that at least with Paul there, he was able to sleep again.