Chapter Text
"I'm sorry, I just don't feel that way."
Ellie feels bad for Hardy, standing before her with those puppy-dog eyes.
Well, she will fell bad for him pending his reaction to her response. If he is as doggedly persistent with her as he is at work, she'll have a few choice words for him, and 'sorry' won't be among them again.
But he isn't.
"Oh right, yeah. Right. Of course." With that, he turns and walks away, head hung low, a long shadow trailing him in the afternoon sun. She watches him leave and hopes they didn't just ruin their friendship.
Things don't change immediately. But where before he came over for dinner at least once a week, he now begs off for seemingly made-up reasons. Over the next weeks, he starts falling back into old habits, staying at work late and coming in long before anyone else. He still makes tea for both of them, but he doesn't wait for her to join him in the kitchenette, instead just leaving the mug on her table while she's in the loo.
Daisy has gone off to uni the year before and without her to push him out into the world, Hardy retreats into his shell. He keeps his distance from people, especially Ellie. Fred keeps asking why his Uncle Alec isn't coming over anymore, and Ellie just doesn't know what to tell him. She's worried for Hardy, and this chasm between them is the last thing she wants. But she just doesn't feel how he wants her to feel. They're friends, good friends. Maybe he's even her best friend. But there's no spark there. And she deserves better than to settle for someone she doesn't actually want. In fact, he deserves better, too. He deserves someone who'll have butterflies in their stomach when they look at him, who wants to have his lanky frame wrapped around them. But that just isn't her. Never will be.
She starts dating again soon after. Not to hurt him. She never wants to do that. But him asking her out gave her the push she needed to realise that it’s time to move on. She gets her friends to set her up on dates. There’s Andrew, a nice-enough banker who knows better than to expect a reward for paying for dinner. But he’s as dull as a dishrag and she can’t stand more than two dates with him.
Then there’s Patrick, a very good-looking solicitor she meets during one of their cases. He waits until the case is over before he asks her out. He takes her out to a classical concert which he finds thrilling and she wants to get away from after about five minutes. She tells him they don’t have anything in common and she isn’t sorry not to see him again.
The next couple of dates are complete disasters. The first guy gets a bit too handsy and ends up in A&E with a sprained wrist and a bruised ego. The next doesn’t even show up and texts five days later to tell her that he’d found someone else who was “hotter and younger” than Ellie. She wants to throw her phone at the wall after that one.
Meanwhile, Hardy keeps his distance. He doesn't treat her differently when others are around, doesn't let anyone see what happened. He just… stays away. Keeps to himself, their friendship seemingly broken beyond repair. She hates that this has happened, that she’s lost the one man she thought would always be there. But when their paths do happen to cross outside of work, things are awkward. Every bit of intimacy they had built up over the years is gone. They no longer joke with each other, they don’t commiserate about what their children have been up to, and they don’t touch. That had been a recent addition to their friendship. Not that there was a lot of it, of course not. But an occasional hand on her elbow or a comforting touch on her shoulders. Even a quick hug once after a difficult case when she needed to feel something… anything. She can see now that it was his clumsy way of flirting. She can even admit that her accepting his touch after all those years of refusing to let him get too close might have seemed to him like she felt the same way. Now that it’s gone, she does miss it at times, but still… she just doesn’t feel the same way and that won’t change.
A few months later, Ellie meets Michael. He is a teacher at Fred’s school and he notices her on Sports Day. They chat for a while and when she leaves, she has his number and the kind of butterflies she hasn’t felt since the early days of dating Joe.
They go out for the first time a week later and he’s just what she hoped he would be. He’s funny, kind and charming, listening to her attentively, not intimidated by her work. Not scared off by her past. It takes a while for them to be able to go on a second date, but when they do, it’s even better and at the end of the night, she goes home with him. Her last experience was on that horrible night out with Claire Ripley, and she almost wants to cry when Michael spends as much time on her pleasure as he does his own. She comes with a gasp and a feeling that she has finally, truly left Joe behind.
Michael quickly becomes a fixture in her life, replacing the Hardy-shaped hole and then some. After a couple of months, she introduces him to her boys. Tom couldn’t care less, but he’s polite, at least. For once, Fred is the troublesome one. He still misses Hardy and doesn’t understand why the grumpy Scot is barely around anymore. Fred stomps off when she suggests that Michael could be his new uncle, slamming the door to his room in a way she’s only used to from his older brother. She laughs sheepishly, hoping Michael won’t take it the wrong way.
“This Hardy, he’s close to you then?” he asks and she struggles to describe what they are… were to each other.
Michael only hums in response, but he isn’t scared away. He takes Fred’s attitude in stride, assuring her that he will respect her son’s reluctance and simply give him time to get used to their relationship. Ellie snogs him then and wishes for a moment that she hadn’t decided on a strict ‘no staying over’ rule for now. But it’s better this way, better to let things develop for a while before Tom and Fred have to deal with a new man at their breakfast table. So she snogs him a bit more before he leaves and she feels content in a way she hasn’t in a long time.
For a few months, things continue in this way. She and Michael go out whenever they both find the time (of course, she’s the one who struggles to find time mostly, what with her job and the kids), they go to his place after, then she goes home. He spends time with her and the boys, but he doesn’t stay over. It works. It’s good and, once she feels more secure in their relationship and lets him fully into her life and home, it’ll be even better.
But then, more than a year after that fateful day, Hardy doesn’t show up for work. It's Monday morning, and no one has heard from him since Friday afternoon when Katie was the last to leave the office before him. Ellie hesitates. They’re not close anymore. She doesn’t even remember the last time she was at his place. He wants to be left alone, he’s made that clear. And yet… What if something is wrong with his heart? Without Daisy around, it could take a while before anyone finds him. She calls him, but he doesn't pick up. She tries again, and again. Still nothing.
After another missed call, she picks up her purse and makes her way to her car. Time to check up on a certain knobhead.