Work Text:
Alec holds her until it all goes away.
Nearly all of it, anyway. It’s an awkward hug, to say the least, but his hands are tight around her shoulders, then her back. She holds him back, because he’s a shoulder to cry on, and that’s one thing she needs right now. He tells her things, things only he can say, which make it all better. Not okay, not exactly, things will never be okay, but Alec says things, assures her things only he can. He’s so soft, so gentle, everything she needs, everything which can get her through this.
That hotel room, the little four walls which surround her, they seem like home now, much more than where she’s staying, that’s not her home. She’s not happy there, not like she is here, with him, with Alec. She finds it odd that the one man who used to irritate her like hell is the one she can talk to after all this. But he doesn’t yell at her. Doesn’t talk to her about anything she doesn’t want to hear. He just listens and responds. Anything she wants, he’s there.
And this is no exception.
He sits back, looks at her, his hands on her shoulders. He stays close, so close that Ellie can feel his breath on her face, his words in her ears. “What do you need, Miller?” He asks slowly.
“Really. Right now?” She thinks for a moment. She looks at him, then to the ground, taking a moment. She knows what she needs. Not from anyone. She wants it from him, specifically from him, no one else. It’s out of her character, and inappropriate of her to ask, but it comes out all the same, violent and incredibly blunt. “A good fuck.”
She expects him to be shocked, at least a little surprised, but he just takes his hands from her shoulders and sits back, laughing. She’s lost for a second, watching him with a ridiculous grin on his face, unable to speak a word at all, least to her. “Is that so?” Comes eventually; he still has that grin, but now he looks at her, his eyes wide.
A hand clasps to her mouth. “Shit.” She exclaims, and she stands up, taking her coat from the back of the chair and making for the door.
But she is stopped in her tracks as she feels a hand grips her wrist, and the familiar, Scottish command of ‘Miller’, ordering her to stay.
The rest is all a blur.
Suddenly both her wrists are gripped. Alec Hardy is stood in front of her, so close, so incredibly close. She finds her hands gripping the lapels of his jacket, pulling him in, holding him in, the awkward desperation of lips trying to find lips, until they meet and they won’t part, they can’t part, because they’ve been apart for so long. Her arms begin to wrap around his neck, his around her waist: it’s not neat, it’s not perfect, it’s just what they want, what they are, and if that’s not what Ellie needs then there’s nothing else they can do.
She trips back onto the bed: she expects a fall, but Alec catches her, lays her down gently, her short hair spreading out across the pillow. He’s something she’s not used to, something new, but it’s a good new: he doesn’t crush her, doesn’t rush her, just kisses her, almost desperately, runs his hands through her hair, does everything so gently and right. She doesn’t know what to do except kiss him back, hold him close, not let him go, because he’s all she never realised she wanted and now she finally has him, and she damn well doesn’t want to let him go.
“Something like this, Miller?” He asks between kisses; she realises that his smirk is no longer a smirk, it’s a smile, a proper smile, mirroring hers. How does she answer? She has nothing to compare him to, she doesn’t fantasize, doesn’t dream, and she’s damn well not comparing him to Joe, so he’s exactly what she wants. Exactly what she needs.
And wasn’t that what she asked?
“Exactly Sir.” She answers, and as each kiss deepens and everything begins to fall into place, she realises just how quickly she has gone from loosing everything to gaining everything, an instantaneous change, almost.
All she wanted.
***
Ellie awakes before Hardy does.
He’s lying next to her asleep, sprawled out across the bed. He doesn’t have his arms around her, doesn’t even face her, and that’s how it should be, she thinks. He snores too, bless. She watches him for a second, asleep, and she smiles. He looks happy, and it makes her happy, so incredibly happy, because she’s needed some happiness in this damn world for such a long time. She looks around the room: clothes covering the floor, not in the horrible neat piles they always had to be back at her home, even though she was the only one who ever did a bloody thing about it. She realises how much they suit: she has gone from perfection to inperfection, yet she’s more happy with the company of the latter. She worries, for a moment, that there is something wrong with her, that she isn’t right, but one look back over to Alec and she convinces herself that she isn’t.
She slept with Alec Hardy. She tells herself again, she bloody slept with bloody Alec Hardy, and not because of some obligation, or to impress, or because someone told her, but because she wanted to. She’s been sick and tired of people ordering her about, not letting her make her own desicions, so she takes the one biggest desicion she can. And she feels nothing. No regret, no guilt, not like there always is, not like there should be. Just her, and him, and the sense that they’ve taken something which was perhaps wrong, and made it so very, very right.
Does Ellie love Alec? She asks herself with the horrifying realisation that she’d be happier if the answer was yes. Perhaps she does. Perhaps she doesn’t. The past week has been a mess, and all she knows is that he is the only one who has pulled her through. She enjoys his company, so, so much, and more to the point she values it, but whether she loves him is a huge question which she is not entirely sure she can answer. After all, she thought, no, she loved Joe until a week ago, and it’s no longer a thought or feeling she keeps in priority, so whether or not she feels the same thing for Alec is an unanswerable question. Besides, does the question need an answer? Even if she does love him, there are little to no chances of him feeling the same. The question stays in her head, she can’t shake it, despite the million other things which occupy it.
She doesn’t move until he wakes up. He lifts his head of the pillow in a daze, looking around, before falling back down onto the bed. “Morning, Miller.” The muffled sound comes through, and she can’t help but laugh.
“The entire night and it’s still ‘Miller’?” She asks, turning to face him and leaning her head on her hand. “Typical!”
“Ah, well. Can’t change the habit of a lifetime.” He sits up himself and turns to face her, the smile from the night before not having left his face.
And they just lie there, in the moment, staring at each other. There is no need to say anything, every word has been said, everything has already been done. Of course, they have questions. Most of the questions are the same. What does this mean, do they do it again? If there’s no answers, there’s no point in asking them.
But then there’s the last question. The one Ellie asked to herself, the one damn thing she can’t work out. She asks it again as she watches him sit up, quickly pull on yesterdays trousers, walk over to the bathroom with a gentle smile back to her, and it all falls in to place.
“Yes.” Comes out louder than she thought, for he turns back to her with an eyebrow raised.
“Did you say something, Miller?”
She stops for a second. She can tell him, tell him every damn thing, this is what she bloody wants, the one thing, and she can tell him right now. This is what she’s waited for, the one thing she’s wanted, and here it is.
“No. I… didn’t say anything.” She utters with a gentle smile, and watches him turn his back and walk away.
After all, she thinks. Some things are better left unsaid.