Chapter Text
Being pulled into Jenkinson’s office was not a good start to the day.
She knew what it was for before she arrived. Their old DI, a kind but incompetent man who had only accepted the job as a way to coast into retirement, had been ‘let go’ the month before, and Ellie had applied for his job.
“You know why you’re here,” Elaine said. It wasn’t a question.
“I assume to be told I didn’t get the job and to stop applying.”
Elaine sighed. “You’re a good cop, Ellie. And I wish I could give you the job. But it’s too soon, after what happened. I’m not saying never, but not now. I’m afraid we’ve made an offer to someone else.”
“Someone here?” She asked, wincing a bit at the thought of someone younger and more inexperienced rising the ranks ahead of her. She tried not to feel gutted. Or at least not let it show how disappointed she was.
“No, an external hire. Haven’t heard back from him, yet, and I suspect he’ll turn it down. But I just want to make it clear that if you hear of him turning it down, it doesn’t mean that we’ll be hiring internally.”
Doesn’t mean we’ll be hiring you, she means.
“Right. It’s a good position. Can’t imagine he’d be turning it down.”
Elaine shrugged. “Bit surprised he even applied, honestly. He’s made quite a name for himself, lately, solving a cold case homicide. I’ve heard through some other departments that bigger districts are trying to poach him.”
Ellie froze. He couldn’t. Not even he could be so bloody stupid, could he?
“Cold case homicide? ...Alec Hardy?”
Jenkinson gave her a look.
“Hardy.”
The fact that his tone had been gruff meant that he was busy, and hadn’t even glanced at the caller I.D. before answering. It was an absolutely pointless, unimportant thing that made her blood boil.
“You fucking twat.”
There was a pause. “If yer tryin’ out pet names, think I’d prefer you stick with ‘Alec.’”
“Would you? How about DI Alec Hardy of the Wessex Police, Broadchurch Division. That suit you any better?”
Another pause. “Fuckin’ hell, does any information stay private in that bloody town?”
“You took my job and couldn’t be bothered to tell me? What, were you gonna wait until I show up for work and your name was suddenly on the door?”
“No!” He cried. “Jesus, El. Take a breath.”
“Don’t tell me what to fucking do!”
There’s an irritated sigh on the other line. “Ellie, I haven’t taken the job. I just got the offer this mornin’. Told ‘em I’d let ‘em know.”
“You applied for my job and didn’t tell me.”
“You told me yourself that you know they’d not promote you, not for a long time.”
“That’s not the point,” she snapped.
“I didn’t even know if I’d get the job, I didn’t want this to be a big discussion if it went to someone else. I was gonna tell you, Ellie. Today, tomorrow maybe. Was Daisy’s idea, anyway.”
“What was?” she hissed, realising her shouting on the steps of the CID is drawing some attention.
“Applyin’. She’s the one that saw the postin’. She’s been...job huntin’ for me, apparently. I wasn’t happy about it, either.”
“Why was Daisy looking for jobs for you?” She snapped irritably. The anger was fading quickly, but she wasn’t ready to let it go, yet.
He sighed. “She’s...at war with ‘er mother. Been bad for a while, but since the Sandbrook trial...they been at each other’s throats. She’s been lookin’ for jobs in yer area, knowin’ I’d be more likely to take it if I was closer to you. She could move with me, get some space from Tess. An’ things are still rough at school, between her photos goin’ around and the news about the affair comin’ out in the press. She’s miserable, just wants to get away. Pretendin’ it was for me, but…. Didn’t find out about it ‘til she pointed out the listin’ at Broadchurch. I decided to apply. If I didn’t get the job, I didn’t...there was no point in startin’ the conversation with you.”
She hated it when he was calm and rational when she wanted to be pissed at him.
"Oh."
"She's so unhappy, El. And I want to be with you an'...I thought maybe this would be good for us."
“You’ll be bored to tears, Alec. This is a small town, we get burglaries and petty vandalism. Not...what you’re used to.”
“El...if you don’t want me comin’ there, you just have to say.”
Ellie’s sighed. “It’s not that. I just...the Chief Superintendent said that you were being...poached. That bigger districts wanted you on, since Sandbrook. More prestigious positions. You can’t stand not helping, Alec. I’m not trying to dissuade you, I’m just...trying to understand.”
“‘M tired o’ the...stress,” he confessed. “Daisy’s sick o’ my bein’ away all the time. ‘M not doin’ anythin’ particularly well, right now. Failin’ everyone. Tired o’ drivin’ ages just to see you. Or not seein’ you at all. Been a shit father, a shit partner to you. Somethin’ quieter might be...a good change.”
“It might be a lot. Working together, suddenly seeing each other every single day. We might drive each other up the wall.”
“We wouldn’ be movin’ in together. Have our space, give us time to adjust.” There was a long pause, and Ellie realised she was supposed to say something. “El...I meant it when I said I’d turn it down. Just like that, no questions asked. If you don’t want it, I’ll tell ‘em no and we’ll never speak of it again.”
“Can...I have time to think on it? When did you tell them you’d let them know?”
“Next Monday,” he replied. “Ellie...don’t feel pressured, yeah? I’ll not be upset with you, if you don’t want it.”
“I know,” she said. She didn’t.
From that moment on, it’s all she could think about.
She tried to imagine him breezing through the halls at the CID and into the now-empty DI’s office, or pouring himself a cuppa in the cramped office kitchen. She pictured sitting on the sofa in his office, him doing that god-awful list of questions that he never left time for her to answer, and the two of them cracking jokes at Dirty Brian’s expense (a term he had coined, when Ellie told him about his attempts to ask her out).
At home was even worse. She could almost see him standing in the kitchen, sock-footed, making dinner. The two of them having a screaming row in the living room. Waking up beside him in bed. She wondered, and not for the first time, how he would be with her boys. If they would get on. If Tom would despise him for not being Joe, or rather, who they wanted Joe to be.
She started to notice couples together, curled up on benches by the seaside, mooning over one another at cafes where she stopped for lunch. She’d been too busy, between her job and single parenthood, to realise how much she missed him when he wasn’t around. But Daisy didn’t live with Alec, and if she was away, he had far more time on his hands to think about his own loneliness.
Despite bigger, more prestigious jobs at larger divisions, accepting those jobs would mean to see more gruesome, grisly cases. He was consumed by those cases already, constantly living in fear of being just a bit too late, waiting just a little too long, and having the killer or rapist or other violent criminal hurt someone else. He’d work even more than he did now, and would barely see Daisy even if she did live with him. Not to mention those bigger divisions would take him farther away from Ellie, and the commute was already difficult on him. On them both.
But working together could be a disaster. They bickered at the best of times, to work together all day and night might make them hate one another. The thought terrified her, that she might actually lose him by having him too much. They were far too different, and that could work to their advantage, or it could completely drive them apart.
Ellie had never been good with risks. Even worse, now, after Joe. But how long could this continue? Exhaustion and long drives and busy schedules, sometimes to just doze on the sofa in each other’s arms because they were too bloody tired to do anything else.
She had told him, once, that he was bad at asking for things in relationships. For communicating his needs. Perhaps this was one of them. Perhaps she needed to let go of her own fear of this. Then again, there was a difference between holding someone at arms’ length as a means of protection and respecting personal boundaries. She’d lost all sense of trusting her instincts.
Christ, she wasn’t getting any closer to making a decision.
When Lucy agreed to watch the boys for the night, Ellie immediately packed a bag and climbed into her car.
They had both agreed to a strict ‘no talking about moving’ policy.
Alec greeted her at the door, smiling but looking nervous, as though preparing himself for an argument. She was determined not to give him one.
He had dinner waiting for them, and they ate like civilized people, pretending that they didn’t just want to abandon it all and go straight to the bedroom.
It’s where they end up anyways.
If Ellie had ever been forced to guess what kind of man Alec was in bed, she never would have chosen ‘indulgent.’ If he had his way, sex would always be a long, intimate, tender affair. Even when they were exhausted from a long week at work, even when they haven’t slept in ages, or were just desperately in need of some stress relief.
He was more often than not willing to sacrifice this for her own more varied needs, and quite enjoyed himself doing it, but there were times that he would still when she tried to urge him on towards the inevitable conclusion.
“Slowly,” he’d beg, burying his face against the crook of her neck, his voice little more than a breath in her ear. “Please, El.”
She knew, when he’d worked up the courage to plead like that, it was something he really needed.
When she’d nod in consent, he’d begin again, slowly, languidly, kissing down along her jaw and throat, lifting her hand to rest beside her head so he could entwine their fingers.
When he collapsed beside her, she immediately curled into his side, pressing her lips against his shoulder as his arm came around her.
“You alright?” She asked breathlessly, and he nodded.
“Yeah. Why, was it not…?”
“Good, as always,” she reassured. “You just seem a bit…I don’t know. I just wanted to make sure you’re alright.”
“Thought we weren’ gonna talk about it.”
“Is that what it’s about?” she asked. “Because maybe we should talk about it.”
He sighed. “I’s not about that. Promise. Just…been a long week. Workin’ long hours on a case, and then was s’posed to have lunch with Dais on Thursday. Totally forgot, stood ‘er up. Not the first time it’s happened, though not sure if that makes it better or worse.” He sighed. “How d’you do it, Ellie? Two kids an’ the job you have…”
“By constantly swallowing feelings of guilt and shame. She knows you love her.”
“‘M failin’ ‘er. She’s had a horrible go o’ things, lately, between her pictures goin' round school and the Sandbrook trial…she needs me an’ I’m failin’ ‘er.”
“You’re doing everything you can. She’s a teenager. Teenagers hate you, no matter what you do. Just a shitty fact of life.”
“But movin’... I worry, you know, that comin’ to Broadchurch would be...teachin’ her to run away. That she’ll never learn to stand ‘er ground and fight a wee bit. But it would be...it would be different if I were there, El. If I could be there for ‘er, support ‘er. If I was around, my job weren’ so...” He sighed. “I’m leavin’ ‘er to the wolves, Ellie. She’s not my girl, anymore, I can see ‘er...slippin’ away from me. Gettin’ quieter, less cheerful. She’s withdrawin’ from the world and I feel like I’m just watchin’ it happen. I want to teach ‘er to stay an’ fight, but keepin’ ‘er in a miserable situation when I might be able to do better by ‘er? I’m ‘er father, do I not owe that to ‘er?”
“Not many fathers would even consider doing something this big for their daughters, uprooting their lives like this,” she praised quietly.
“Wouldn’ they?” Ellie still loved the way he seemed so bewildered whenever he learned it wasn’t a perfectly normal thing to unthinkingly make enormous sacrifices.
“It’s a good thing you want to do, I do know that. I just...need a bit more time to think.”
Alec pressed the heel of his hand against his eye, frustrated. “Am I scarin’ you off, Ellie?”
She snorted, rolling over onto her stomach and propping her chin up on her hands to meet his gaze. “You’re going to ask me that after sex? Came here willingly, didn’t I?”
He didn’t smile. Serious conversation, then. “I thought…I dunno. Am I suffocatin’ you?”
“Suffocating me? We haven’t seen one another in a week and a half.”
“But are you worryin’ about it? Me movin’ to Broadchurch, bein’ too close to you, bein’…needy?”
“I could think of a thousand ways to describe you, Alec, and ‘needy’ wouldn’t even be on the list. You want to move closer to the woman you’ve been dating for a year and a half and to give your daughter a better life, that’s…normal. Beyond normal.” Ellie sighed, suddenly self-conscious herself. “This is about me, it has nothing to do with you.”
That caught his interest. “Wha’ d’you mean?”
“I just…I don’t know. Worry what people will think.”
“That they’ll think less o’ you, for seein’ me?”
“No,” she replied quickly, reaching out to brush his damp hair from his forehead. “Never that. Just that…I don’t know. After Joe…maybe they’ll judge me for seeing someone new, for trying to find some happiness. Danny’s dead, what right do I have to move on?”
“That wasn’t yer fault, El.”
“Maybe not, but it’s a small community. People can be…gossipy and judgemental. I just…can’t afford to make mistakes. Even if I do everything right, I’m still the murderer’s wife. And if I do something wrong, then I’m the murderer’s wife, with all the questionable morality that comes with it.”
“If people are judgin’ you, it’s because they don’t want to think it could happen to them. They don’t want to believe that bad people look like everyone else. If you married one, there must be a reason. They look for ways that it could never happen to them. S’human nature.”
“You’re…right. I know that, but…it’s not just my reputation. It’s my boys. They’ve suffered enough because of one parent, I don’t want to cause them any more pain.”
Alec slowly ran his fingers through her hair, then down to stroke her cheek. “Their dad taught ‘em how to be ashamed, Ellie. Don’t teach ‘em how to isolate themselves ‘cause they’re damaged in some way. Speakin’ from experience...it’s a miserable existence. They haven’t done anythin’ wrong, an’ they shouldn’ have to carry that. Neither should you. If anyone deserves to be happy, Ellie Miller, it’s you.”
Tears in her eyes, she shuffled up to press a kiss to Alec’s chest and then his lips.
“‘M not just sayin’ that so you’ll agree to me movin’. If it’s too soon, if you don’t ever want it…I mean it. Want you to be happy, even if I can’t have you. But don’t…stop yerself from livin’ yer life, or...stay in a relationship you don’t want, just ‘cause you don’t think you deserve better.”
“You make me happy,” she assured him, pulling him down for another kiss, then another. Alec’s arms came around her, and he rolled them onto their sides, still grabbing and touching and kissing. “I love you.”
“Love you,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Now, we’ll not talk o’ me movin’ again, not until you make up yer mind. We had a deal.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You could at least try to be nice.”
Work-Alec was not the strolling type, apparently, and strode determinedly across the car park at such a pace that she’d had to scramble along to keep up. He’d been eager to jump right into work, and after glancing at files, he’d chosen to tag along to interview a witness, calling out this intention in the middle of the office. He’d given nothing but a blink in surprise when Ellie had confessed that it was her task he would be joining in, and she could feel the sympathetic looks on her back as she followed him out of the station.
“Am bein’ nice,” he replied, turning on his heel to face her so quickly that she nearly ran straight into his chest. The bloody wanker had the gall to smirk at her. “You think this is bad, should’a seen me at m’last place. Sandbrook wasn’t solved, hadn’t seen Daisy in months, no pacemaker an’ thought I’d drop dead any second. Bloody misery.”
He’d been out of place the second he’d arrived. The crew had introduced themselves as soon as he walked in the door, a friendly greeting that he apparently found alarmingly invasive. He looked at them all like a pack of wild dogs, waiting for one of them to lunge at him at any moment.
“Right, but you couldn’t have actually spoken to them instead of disappearing into your office immediately after arriving.”
“Had work to do, wanted to get started.”
“A string of pornographic vandalism isn’t exactly a time-sensitive issue. You could have chatted.”
He snorted. “Chatted. I’ll meet ‘em eventually. S’fine. But they’re not my mates, they’re my colleagues. Don’t care if they’re charmin’ or everyone likes ‘em, I care if they can do their jobs. And seein’ as I’ve been here two minutes, the jury’s still out.”
It had been so long since she’d seen Alec around other people that she’d forgotten how gruff he could be. He was a right bastard, when he wanted to be, she had seen it the first night they’d met, but he’d grown so unbelievably gentle with her, despite all their bickering, that it was a shock to the system to see him look rather uninterested in all other human interaction.
“Were you really worse in your last place?”
“Sure. Woulda yelled at the lot o’ them for standin’ about and wastin’ time. Shoulda heard the nicknames I got. You’d’ve wrung my neck.” He paused, then, and cleared his throat. “Yer regrettin’ it already, aren’t you? Me movin’ here.”
“No,” she said honestly. “It’s just…a shock to see you act like such a bastard.”
“Thought I was always a bastard.”
It was her turn to smile, then. “Oh, you are. But you’re different with me than you were in there just now.”
“Yeah, ‘cause I’m not shaggin’ Dirty Brian.” She scowled, and he sighed, defeated. “Work is work. Not here to make friends. ’M not the…socializin’ type. No point in pretendin’ when they’re gonna figure it out sooner or later anyway. May as well know where they stand with me.”
It was difficult to reconcile her feelings. Joe had always been well-liked, before. He knew shopkeepers, knew the names of all of the dads of Tom’s football mates. Pillar of the community. That the same community already seemed put off by Alec was disheartening. She loved him, it hurt that no one else seemed to. But then again, they would see eventually what a caring man he was, that he was bloody good at his job. Joe’s exterior was a comforting lie, and Alec had no intentions of being anything but honest. In being off-putting up front, he was somehow trustworthy.
“‘M never gonna be liked by ‘em, you know,” he said, so softly it startled her out of her thoughts. His grumpy tone she had long since learned to tune out. “‘M no good at it, couldn’ keep it up. I don’t want you to be embarrassed by me either, though. If people find out.”
“I’m not embarrassed by you,” she assured. “But it bothers me that they don’t know you like I do. And you’re not making it easy.”
“Don’t care what they think, I care what you think.”
They hadn’t wanted to advertise their relationship, not yet. Not with Alec just moving in and taking the job Ellie had been vying for. But the thought of sneaking around and hiding was far too exhausting to contemplate. So they had agreed to keep to themselves and not make a show of it, and people would find out when they found out.
Ellie sighed. “I know you’re never going to be a social butterfly, but this is a close-knit community. Don’t go out of your way to make everyone think you’re a twat.”
“Hm. Fifty-fifty,” he said, shoving his hands into his trouser pockets. “I’ll make an effort fifty percent o’ the time, and you tolerate the other fifty. Deal?”
“I’m not sure that’s really how compromise is supposed to work. Aren’t you worried at all?”
“About wha’?”
“That we’re going to drive one another crazy, that it’s not going to work?”
Alec shrugged. “I don’t want it to go bad between us, but…however mad we get, however miserable you make me, it’d always be worse without you. I’d always be unhappier without you. If this ends, Ellie, it ends because you leave me. ‘M not goin’ anywhere.”
He said it in such a dry, matter-of-fact way that it almost didn’t seem like one of the most romantic things someone had ever said to her. She felt tears building in her eyes.
“Christ, are you cryin’?”
“I’m not, you bastard!”
Whatever smart-arse remark he may have made was cut off when Katie came jogging across the parking lot, waving a yellow Post-It note. “Ellie!” Katie caught sight of her, giving her a sympathetic look, as though to say you poor thing, two seconds alone with him and he’s already made you cry. “Ellie, call just came in. Vandals hit up the record shop on 8th. Paint’s still fresh, they think it’s been done in the last thirty minutes or so. Should I let them know you’re on your way?”
“We’ll go,” he answered for her, tossing her the keys to the car and moving to the passenger side. “C’mon, Miller.”
She tried to disguise her irritation. Best not to be too familiar with him, not in front of Katie. He was her boss, after all. “Can you just call me Ellie? I don’t really like the surnames thing at work. Everyone here calls me Ellie.” She raised her eyebrows pointedly.
“Ellie,” he pronounced, as if the word had never crossed his lips before, as if he hadn’t been using it for ages (as if he didn’t groan it into her ear in bed). “Ellie. Ellie.” He met her gaze, the corner of his mouth just barely twitching upwards in what she knew was a smile. He shook his head. “Nah.”
Twat.