Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The beeping was slow and continuous, like her own personal clock except it didn’t stop ticking even after she had left the room. No; it followed her around long after she had stepped away from the suffocatingly clinical ball of wires, disinfectant and antibacterial gel that was Hardy’s hospital room and only then when she was long gone, far away from it all, did the ticking return and morph into something different. What was wrong with DI Hardy?
Oh, there was no denying he was a sick man (you could tell that just by looking at him, sometimes) but Ellie had seen heart medication and it didn’t look like that. It had never looked like that - two meagre oval pills—two pills a day?—rattling around in a thick brown bottle. The only pills she had ever seen that looked like that, were...

“Mrs. Hardy?”

”Miller. It’s Miller, actually. Miss.” Ellie coughed, tapping her flat shoes against the tile of the floor and sitting up in the stiff-backed chair as she was summoned. For a moment she couldn’t meet the gaze of that who had called her and instead glanced over at Hardy. He looked so pale faced and.. and small, lying there swathed in blankets and wires and intravenous lines. Not that she would ever tell him that.

”Oh.” The ward sister recoiled, looked at her notes again and for a moment seemed to reconsider the decision to let Miller into his room. “Miss Miller, do you happen to know Mr. Hardy’s next of kin? It isn’t you, I’m assuming?”

Ellie hesitated. The ward sister pushed the ball forward. “We’re looking at keeping him on the ward for a few days, just under observation, but he’ll need clothing and toiletries...”
She trailed off, questioningly, and Ellie nodded in slow understanding. “...no, I- I don’t think he has any.” A lie of course. Ellie knew of Hardy’s wife, of Hardy’s child— but it was hardly as if they would be able to come to his rescue. “It’s just me.”

The ward sister nodded and in one pointed motion passed Ellie Hardy’s jacket, gaze flickering down to the bulging rightmost pocket. “In that case, this is down to you.”

Ellie rose, silent, and clicked toward the door but made no attempt to release herself from the disinfected bubble just yet. “Those pills,” she murmured, turning to face the ward sister once more.
Now that the sister wasn’t leafing through her notes she busied herself by filling a syringe with a milky white liquid — then attaching the syringe to Alec’s IV line. “Those pills,” said the ward sister, “are no good for him. Nowhere near.” A tut. “I’ve always sympathised with people who feel they need to take them but he...” a glance now, at the sleeping Alec, “...he was just overwhelming himself.”
She fell silent, watching as the intravenous line drew in the milky liquid. “Any more and I think he would’ve given himself a heart attack. I’ve put him on a lower dose for now. Body needs to recuperate.”

”Those pills,” Ellie repeated, “...they aren’t heart medication, are they?”
The question hung in the air, dangling on a precariously trembling tightrope. The ward sister studied Ellie; she carried a look about her that said, ‘you don’t know?’, and at long last shook her head.
~

Though Hardy was currently living in a hotel room it was somehow not at all what Ellie was expecting. The room was in a state of untidy peace, as though Hardy was expecting no one to pierce his own tranquil bubble (even if they promised to clean it up for him) — Ellie felt almost sickened at the thought she had to do exactly that. Casefiles, notes and materials sat in neat stacks along the desk and floor beneath. The bathroom door, ajar, let in a bright chink of light and gave Ellie a glimpse of an otherwise undisturbed bathroom if not for a suspicious looking trail of liquid drying on the floor and bottles of pills, the same ones at the hospital, one sealed, the other opened and clearly rooted through. The main sleeping area — two beds, sheets crumpled on both as though he couldn’t decide which to rest in. On one rested a blank workbook and some pencils. Colouring pencils, Ellie noted, not fit for writing up notes— colouring pencils not unlike the ones her young son used. The other bed held the remote control for the television and a very messy note in spider-webbed handwriting (God, how did anyone ever decipher his write-ups?!) that looked as if it had been screwed up, thrown toward the bin, then retrieved again. Biker Mice from Mars, a closer look at the note shouted, channel 0036.
Between the beds was a nightstand. There was a glass resting on it with a few watery remnants of—ah, there was the squished up carton on the floor—orange juice lurking in the bottom.
Not here to snoop. Not here to intrude. It was getting increasingly more difficult for Ellie to tell herself this as she padded around the tiny space. Clothes. He needed clothes.
...Ah. His clothes were strewn messily into an open suitcase, plonked onto the floor beside the leftmost bed. Everything but his uniform, anyway — which was folded neatly in the wardrobe. Gingerly, Ellie plucked out at least three crumpled nightshirts, pants, and threw in a uniform for good luck.
It was only on her way out that the thin light of the bathroom captured her again and her stride faltered. Toiletries. He would need toiletries.
Putting down the pile of clothes Ellie slowly pushed open the door to the bathroom. The glimpse of the puddle on the floor became a full-blown puddle in and of itself trailing from the base of the sink (mercifully, Ellie realised as she bent to sop it up with a flannel, it was water.)
His pills were dotted around the basin, nestled close to his toothbrush and miniature bottles of shampoo and shower gel. A towel (the scratchy cotton hotel kind) hung lopsided on the towel rack. Scooping the miniature bottles up along with the pills into one large handful, Ellie backed out of the bathroom as quick as she had entered. With her armful of pills she blindly—and really rather stupidly—reached out for the pile of clothes she had discarded at the same time - trembling like some sort of human Jenga.
This wasn't Ellie's downfall.
Her downfall was connecting gaze with the keycard to Hardy's room, realising that she needed the card to leave, and reaching over for it.
On cue--
”—Shit!”
...all of Hardy’s pillbottles, pants and even his jacket cascaded out of her arms. Huffing out an agitated breath Ellie sunk down to collect up his now even-more-crumpled clothing. Something else, she paused in realisation, had rolled out of the pocket of Hardy’s jacket and was lying abandoned on the floor... abandoned, floppy, its metal keychain glinting as if it was trying to garner sympathy out of her.
Perhaps, Ellie rationalised, it wasn’t his. Perhaps it was his daughter’s. Reminded him of her, or something; because if there was one thing Ellie knew of Hardy it was that he wasn’t a carry-around-an-elephant-keychain sort of person. But if there was another thing Ellie knew of Hardy—judging by his pills and his sickness and his floppy trunked friend—it was that she didn’t really know him at all.
~

“What do you do to relax, Hardy?” Ellie asked brightly, leaned against the rocky wall. No point in pussy footing around the subject, was there? She had seen those pills, she had seen his room. And Hardy was a clever man, he would have the dots connected the second he woke up and saw her saunter blurrily into his line of vision holding out a bagful of his clothes.
She stuffed a salt-fattened chip into her mouth, mumbling, then held the greasy paper out toward him. When he didn’t make any movement to grab a handful she nudged it toward him once more. He had just been released from hospital, narrowly escaping death’s talons by the sounds of things, this was a bloody celebration as far as she was concerned.
Next to her she could feel all of Hardy’s thoughts slowing down, his gaze sharpening in upset as he looked out over the sea.
“...I drink.” he murmured.

He said it in such a way that while Ellie knew he was telling the truth she really rather suspected something else was hidden beneath it. “Oh,” she cocked her head, face scrunching in a scoff. “Not that. Come on, you must know what I mean.”

”Of course I do,” Hardy grumbled. There was very little point in denying it. Miller was as sharp as he was, if not sharper; denying it would just be another bloody ballache. “I just don’t appreciate your shitty euphemisms. I don’t, ‘relax’--" he frowned, venom dripping behind every word as he put up his shields and turned away, voice rising. Despite that - she should never have agreed to go there. That was his private space. That was his secret to keep. “I never have. I don’t believe in the system. I believe in getting justice and working hard and—”
And I can’t do that like this. Unspoken words but words that were so very obvious he may as well have spoken them anyway.

Ellie looked at him even though he couldn’t make her gaze and sucked her lip, tasting salt. “—And that’s why you’re taking those pills, you bloody idiot? Don’t give me that bullshit, I know what they are. Hardy, suppressing what’s biological—what’s inside you—it’s dangerous. You could’ve died, no wonder you’re collapsing all over the place!”

”Oh, don’t, Miller.” Hardy spat as though he was working his way through a fat glob of gristle. “You sound like my mother.”

Not the best comparison. Ellie bit something back and watched Hardy as he shakily breathed out.
“Let’s finish early today,” she decided once the silence had gathered, as if that’s a thing they do, as if they finish together. Forensics were still working on prints and until they came back from analysis any progression in the case is out of their hands at least for the evening—and Hardy had just been discharged from hospital, for Christ’s sake!
“Take a night. Give in to it, Hardy. I mean properly—really properly. Once, just once, and if it doesn’t work you can say well there you bloody go then and we’ll never talk about it ever again.”

Alec looked at her for a long, long moment. Looked at her as if she’d lost the plot—or as if he had for daring to slip into it.

”...Cartoons,” he murmured. “I watch cartoons.”
~

“Cartoons, then!” Ellie chirped, voice artificially bright. She swung her arms as she looked around his hotel room—as if she was seeing it for the first time. Something about being around Littles made this bright bouncy voice come out - one more suited for a pre-school teacher rather than who she really was. That was the caregiver in her, evidently. “What cartoons do you like?”
The grin on her face was so wide her cheeks ached but Goddamn it if she wasn’t getting Hardy to engage with her. “Fred watches loads of CBeebies. God, please don’t tell me you watch CBeebies. I think I’ve seen enough CBeebies for it to dribble out of my ears.”

Hardy sniffed, plopped onto the bed next to her and then stared at his perfectly shined shoes before clumsily kicking them off. He tugged at his tie, throwing that off too, and loosened his tight shirt. Had Ellie not been there he would have taken all of his clothes off and switched them for pyjamas, but somehow he was coming off shy. “Channel 36,” he murmured eventually. Any other time and he would have had some very ugly words to say to her, but right now his head was pounding, he felt exhausted, and he wanted to zone out. “Biker Mice from Mars is on now until 6:00. Then Scooby Doo. Then Looney Tunes. Then Dangermouse.” He wasn’t the greatest fan of Dangermouse but it was a take-it-or-leave-it situation until the News took over. Every time he watched them he tried to tell himself he wasn’t the biggest fan of cartoons in general, tried to tell himself that he was just watching them for that Saturday morning nostalgia. Which was true, but it was also partly pining for those years when he really was small enough to curl up on the carpet at six am watching cartoons and messily feeding himself a bowl of extra milky Coco Pops.
(If Ellie thought he sounded as if he had recited the schedule off by heart, that was because he had.)

Ellie watched him, as he climbed into bed all untucked shirt and stiff lined trousers, and sucked her teeth thoughtfully. “Oh come on now, sir,” she scolded gently. “I might be stupid, but even I know you don’t sleep in your uniform!”
He stared at—no, through—her and for a moment Ellie regretted saying anything for it looked as if he was going to spit it all back in his face.
Then he sort of looked like he wanted to deny everything, worried lines creasing at his eyes.
Then, finally—amazingly!—his resolve crumbled. Pushing the duvet off he stood and rummaged through his messy suitcase, pulling out a crumpled pair of cotton pyjamas (that made Ellie wince to look at and want to throw in the laundry) before disappearing off into the bathroom with his parting words being only a slightly pouty, “I’m going to miss it,” as if it was the crime of the century for Ellie to even think of telling him to dress comfortably.

”Not if you hurry up,” Ellie countered, turning on the television.
~

Well, Hardy certainly wasn’t wrong. Television on, tinny theme tune just winding down and precisely at five on the dot Hardy had curled up on one of the beds, hugged his knees, let his head rest on top. Next to him was Ellie, laying flat, one hand underneath her pillow. She made no motion to curl into him, and he her, even though the instinct was there. “...this all you do, then?”
Somehow she had expected more. She had heard of Littles watching cartoons, yes, but then there was fingerpainting or putting together a jigsaw puzzle, LEGO, toy cars... and all he wanted to do was watch television? Oh, he was engrossed in the show, evidently— eyes all glazed over, just about able to squeak out a, ‘Mmm?’ in her direction. “This,” she said, nodding at Biker Mouse #1. “Cartoons. Nothing else? Blocks, cars...” She stiffened slightly, jolting in happy realisation. "Oh! Play-Doh? Fred bloody loves Play-Doh. I can get you some, if you want. And cutters—God, Fred has bloody loads of them. Squishes it all ‘n then cuts it all up into little strips of spaghetti. One of these days I’m going to find Play-Doh in our dinner, I swear."

Hardy studied her intently as she spoke. ”...no. Jus’ cartoons... colouring maybe.” he murmured, flushing pink. “Don’t need anything else. I’m not like... that. I’m not one of those. I’m just... forgetting to take my pills tonight.” Besides—anybody could watch cartoons. It didn’t matter if he was a grown man. Grown men watched cartoons all the time. And did colouring. Right? He doodled all over his notes when there was a lull at work. That meant nothing.
His brow was up, though, as much as he wanted to ignore it. Play-Doh. Play-Doh was a new one. He liked Play-Doh, from all the way back when Daisy was tiny. Long after she'd gone to bed he could happily have sat at the kitchen table making dinosaurs and blobby orange men with green hair.
Attention fractured, his gaze dropped from the television and twisted idly around the room... resting not so subtly on the pile of clothes bursting out of his opened suitcase. He tried to pull away but his gaze returned there again and again. Ever the detective, this didn’t go unnoticed to Ellie either. Even if she didn’t say anything, Hardy knew she could see his gaze move. He squirmed with the pressure. “Well... there is one more thing.” He proposed shyly, fingertips graduating toward his mouth out of instinct.

”Mmm?” Ellie encouraged with a nod. It was only then that she noticed his thumbnails, bitten down to slivers, and in cascaded the realisation.

Hardy slipped from his bed and padded over to his suitcase. He rifled through it with all the care of a Little (not a whole lot!), unzipped the inner pocket, and hunted. His fingers closed around the familiar object, clung, and plopped it into Ellie’s lap.
Ellie stared.
...Well well well.
Mr. Alec Hardy, Mr. ‘I don’t believe in the system’, had a pacifier. A navy blue pacifier with a large clear nipple, attached to a chain consisting of chunky blue-and-white beads so that he could clip it to his clothing if he so wanted to. That, in and of itself, didn’t surprise her. She was a caregiver through and through; very little surprised her. The funny thing about it, though, was that it looked pristine. Freshly taken out of its packaging pristine. There were no scuffs, holes, dribble marks, or any of the other signs of love and care that ended up transferred to a Little’s possessions. She raised her eyebrows to it quietly, well aware of Alec’s presence, and held back the snarky comment as she looked up toward him—drinking in his worried look. “Sir, this is a...” she began softly.

He nodded. “...a pacifier,” he finished her sentence, gnawing ever so slightly on his nails as he stared at it. “I’ve never used it, I’ve just...”
Nailbiting not enough to abate his anxiety, he rocked on his heels. “I’ve just had it, ever since my classification.”

(They had been giving them away, free, on his way out of the centre. He remembered that day as clear as anything; stomping out of there, fists clenched, knowing that whoever next decided to speak to him about anything remotely Little was going to get their head firmly thumped off of their shoulders. A vendor was stood just outside the Little door and clocked onto him before he could try to duck out of her view. "Pacifier, sir?" she asked, voice full of sympathy as she took in his frown--but chugged on as brave as anything. "They're complimentary."
"No, thanks," he tried in vain to shake her off, bristling. No point in denying it even if his skin crawled; she had seen the door he'd slipped out of.
"Oh, go on." she tutted, rifling through the plastic rainbow she had in a basket just in front of her, pausing for thought, and then throwing a navy blue pacifier at him. "Complimentary."
He thought twice about catching it. Thought about letting it fall to the floor and crushing it under his heel with a sickening plastic crunch. Thought about squeezing it in one tight fist until the plastic shattered.
But he caught it. Caught it and threw it into the bottom of his satchel with just a sniff. He didn't know why he did it then; he still didn’t really know any better now. The best he could come up with was a faint and begrudging realisation that if this was his classification he was going to be noted down and treated as such, and so maybe it was a wise decision to come to terms with it.
Except he hadn't. He never had.
He'd found his pills from some deep dark corner of the internet. Two a day, said the label on the bottle, morning and evening or whenever necessary. And he took them and felt a bit numb and sort of forgot about his classification every day until it rolled up into a nice thick bowling ball and punched him in the stomach and the cycle turned around again. He never really paid much thought to his pacifier. Didn't need to, not with the pills. Never really thought about getting rid of it, though. Just stuffed it into his suitcase (out of sight out of mind) as soon as he could and left it there.)

Ellie eyed the pacifier for a long moment, eventually giving Hardy a glance. He seemed to understand what she was asking despite Ellie saying nothing— despite the iceberg concealing every ounce of his Littleness chipping slowly away. He nodded, and she took the pacifier into her own hands, twirling it around slowly. Disbelief swirled. “You don’t believe in the system, but you have a pacifier?” She wanted so badly to bite but knew it risky especially when Sir was in such a vulnerable position; that rocky midpoint of not-Big but not blindingly Little. Instead Ellie held it back. Hardy had clambered back onto the bed now with all the grace of a baby elephant and had pulled the sheets over himself with all the dexterity of a rather large toddler.

Ellie looked at him. She chuckled, fond and sweet, no different to how she would be with Tom or Fred. She straightened his blankets, fiddled with a loose piece of cotton at one corner, and came out with it. “...I think you should use it.”

Alec looked at her if she had gone utterly, completely, over the deep end, insane. Their gaze snapped and fell away in a matter of seconds and then he started to look as though he was considering it, and then as if he had gone utterly, completely, over the deep end insane for even thinking of it - again. Christ.
One night with Miller, and what was she doing to him? "I..." he stammered, mouth opening and closing, staring at the pacifier in her fist. Hesitantly he tugged it from her grip and raised it to his lips - movements all cowed and sheepish as if he was expecting Miller to burst into huge peals of cackling laughter the second he put the nipple to his mouth.
She did not.
(She never would.)
She nodded encouragingly and smiled and made gentle noises of praise. In any other situation Hardy sort of supposed he would bat her away and tell her to leave him alone, but right now he couldn't have felt more comforted. Though hesitant he let the rubber nipple balance precariously on his lip as if it were a fat filled cigar.
This time, Ellie really did chuckle at him. But it wasn't mocking, it wasn't teasing -- it was low and fond and filled with happiness for him. Reaching out one finger, she pushed the plastic shield so the soother fitted more snug around his lips. The rubber nipple was a little more intruding and he 'mmpf'ed in embarrassment around it, tongue not quite sure what to do with this funny-tasting intruder. He stabbed the nub, his tongue swirled slow exploring circles around it, before finding a resting point.
Alec almost worried he wouldn't know what to do next--just leave it there?--but the second his mouth got accustomed to the feeling of the soother in his mouth his instincts were flooded with the need--not the longing, the need--to suck. Slowly he drew in, suckling on the rubber nipple quietly. Nothing changed, aside from the room filling with gentle popping suckles that made his cheeks flush pink. And... and the feeling that every little suckle pulled him further and further into relaxing, all melted and floaty there in the middle of the bed. He shifted slightly, suckled a little more in contentedness, and settled bonelessly in his bedsheets. It was as if sucking on the soother had flicked a switch and woken up his Little-space in a mere moment because now he didn't really mind Ellie being there watching him, nor did he mind having his pacifier. It was just... calming--sort of like being drunk without the drink--and he could go to sleep right now and it wouldn't matter at all.
Alec was so relaxed that falling asleep was almost what he did. He settled down. He closed his eyes. He patted his pockets and the area around him as he always did, searching, exploring. Where was it? He-- he had to have it with him. Always. Even--no, especially--for sleeping. Brow scrunching, the blind and tired movements of his hand on the bedsheets grew even more frantic. "Wh're..."
Sleepiness was stitched into his voice. "Wh're izzit..." a whimper now, as he sat up dizzily and threw the blankets off of him, searching through the tangled sheets. "It.. it has to be here somewhere...!"

"What?" Ellie sat up, looking at him, concern flooding her features. "Sir...? What are you looking for?"

He didn't hear her. "Where... I- I kept it safe, it.." he patted his pockets and catapulted himself over to his suitcase, throwing out handfuls of his clothes.

“What are you looking for?” Ellie asked a little harder this time as Alec ransacked his suitcase and frantically went on a hunt.

“It’s— it’s here somewhere. It has to be here, it’s—“ he stammered, patting down his pyjamas, feeling in the pockets of his suits and his coat and his trousers but obviously to no avail. His eyes filled with tears before he could stop them, biting his lip and running one hand through his hair. It... it had to be here. Think, Alec. THINK. He would never, ever misplace it, it was his and he loved it and kept it. If it wasn’t in the pocket of his coat or suit, it would be... it would be... in bed, maybe? He always took it to bed with him, but only when he was by himself. Not— not when he was in the hospital—so... then it would be in his pocket...
“I need my jacket. I can’t find my jacket.” He ordered, pacing.

All of this fuss over a jacket? Ellie looked around, nodding to the coat he had thrown out of the suitcase. “Your coat is there, Alec, won’t that do?”

“Not that, the other one, there’s another one...” Alec mumbled, biting his thumbnail.

“This one?”
Recognising the jacket she had taken from the hospital Ellie threw it toward him. “Bit crumpled. Let me take it with me, smooth out the creases.” She murmured. He ignored her entirely, feeling in the pocket. It was lumpy, and so the breath that he hadn’t realised he had been holding in came out in a rattled noise of relief. Plunging his fingers into the pocket he felt familiar mink-soft fabric and his heart fluttered happily. He fished the tiny elephant out of the pocket and clutched it in one hand, letting his jacket fall crumpled and unloved to the floor. Satisfied, he clambered back into bed, popped his pacifier back into his mouth—and didn’t let go of his elephant once, the keychain dangling from his fist.

“Where did you get that?” Ellie murmured, watching as Alec curled up with the keychain as if it was his lifeline.
His eyelids were already half closed and even though he was suckling on his pacifier he was doing so sleepily. Of course, she thought. Mums never underestimate the power of a comfort toy.

“Sss’from th’zoo...” he mumbled around the rubber nub.

Ellie cooed, happily springing to a new conclusion. She loved hearing stories about Alec being a parent. Made him feel a bit more... normal. A bit more human. Besides, it looked like a keychain that had cost £2 from the bargain bin of London Zoo, or something, so why he was so attached to it was a mystery, unless...
“Awh. Did Daisy get it for you?”
...yes. That’s what it looked like, after all; a keychain from the bargain bin of London Zoo that Daisy had bought with her pocket money from a school trip... a keychain that he couldn’t quite let go of now that Daisy was a bouncy bratty teenage girl.
But—to Ellie’s eternal surprise—he shook his head. It was slight and sluggish but it was a headshake all the same. “Before she was born...” he said in between a snore. “Mine ‘n Tess’ first date...”
He rolled over, toy still in one fist, drool collecting in a little pearl at the corner of his lip. Tess has bought it for him. She didn’t mind. Not then, not when it was their first date and everything was new and exciting. She indulged him in it as lovingly as any caregiver would. Not that she was a caregiver, mind. She’d ducked and dived away from testing, refusing to believe she was ‘one of those’. Nevertheless they found that happy balance; she didn’t mind so much right the way up until her belly began to swell into a bump. No more, she said then, no more because you have a family now and you want to be a DI and maybe if you weren’t the way you were if you didn’t have this thing this fucking disease then Pippa and Lisa would have survived

...So, no more.

Alec snorted and then snored loudly and exhaustively, body limp. It was an exhausting battle just to say the word ‘date’ apparently, as he had crashed the second it left his mouth. Ellie chuckled, slipping from his bed and tucking him in properly. “Boring company?” She asked him, but all he did in reply was snuggle further into his blankets and cling tighter onto his keychain.

She stayed with him while he slept. He hadn't ever liked it when he was in hospital, but Ellie couldn’t help it. She’d done the same for Tom when he was first born—typical first-time-Mum nerves that oh God what if he’d stopped breathing in his sleep?—and for Fred, so that was the mother hen in her. Slightly different for Alec, she supposed. Not so much to check that he was still breathing, but to make sure his heart didn’t actually give up the ghost while he wasn’t taking his suppressants.

He looked so much more peaceful now. At the hospital he slept with a permanent frown on his face but now the lines in his brow had been rubbed out. His entire face seemed to relax, and the only thing he seemed to focus on was the gentle suckling of his pacifier. It came in bursts; he would suckle, fall quiet, suckle a little bit more and murmur in between. All the while the keychain was clutched tightly in one fist, jangling every time he rolled over. Sometimes he would rub the trunk against his cheek as if he was checking he hadn’t lost it again.
And, if you had asked Alec, he would’ve very much agreed with Ellie’s suspicions. He had never been the greatest sleeper, mind ticking over like an overexcited metronome as it hurtled over every possible result to the case he was working on. Then when he did fall asleep he would start thinking of Sandbrook, of Claire, of Lee, of poor poor fucking Pippa in the water and plunging in to save her, the icyness trickling down his back and into his lungs and making every breath an agonisingly ravaged effort, sloughing through the wetness over and over and over except in his dreams his hands slipped and his grip slackened and under he went with her screaming and coughing lungs bursting with saltwater... until he would explode into a panicked awake state and find that no, while he was not submerged in water, the water had made it into his bed of its own accord and so even more of his precious spare time was mopped up in shameful 4am showers and stripping of beds.
So far, that seemed to be much less of a problem. Alec melted into one of the most comfortable sleeps he’d had in years. Each little suckle of his pacifier batted away any of the creeping scary thoughts before they could bloom into a full blown nightmare.
Or so he thought. Rolling over, pacifier pressed into his mouth, he heard the sound of running water somewhere deep in the back of his brain. It might’ve just been Ellie, ducking into the bathroom while it was quiet—but this water was like freezing rain, droplets thick and lashing down his back. He whimpered, shifted, suckled a little harder as a scream echoed in his ears, loud and desperate, but then the dream plunged on in the same way it always did. Barrelling into the icy water, heart pounding lungs aching legs like gelatine grab Pippa cold dead weight he slips under chokes on saltwater, gurgles until his throat aches but Pippa drifts out of his grasp and No, he screams, no, no

”NOOOO!”
The dream collapsed in on itself as Alec catapulted back to being in the Traders, sat in bed, pyjamas sticking to his back in sweat, chest heaving so hard it made him feel sick; pacifier shot out with the force of his cry, landed in his lap.

”Alec!” Ellie jumped with a gasp, sitting ramrod straight in a nearby armchair. His name flew out of her mouth before she could even think to correct herself - but somehow it felt better in the moment than calling him ‘sir’ or ‘Hardy’. “Oh, Alec, are you alright?”

”I- I need to— gotta—!“ Alec stammered out mid-breath, eyes wide as he scrambled from the sea of duvet toward the bathroom knowing exactly what was coming next if he didn’t move. A tiny part of him, the part not swamped by fear and panic and need, washed over in relief at just the sound of Ellie’s voice.

Ellie waited. There was nothing else for her to do but wait, after all, and he had moved too quickly for her to check on him as her instincts told her to. And, well, Ellie wasn’t stupid. If Alec was running straight for the bathroom there was only one reason why.
So she waited. A minute passed, then another, and although Ellie hardly paid attention to such things she couldn’t help but realise there was no sound coming from the bathroom whatsoever— running water or otherwise. Hesitantly, she upped and padded over to the closed bathroom door, fingers poised to rap against the wood—but something tugged her to a stop. Now that she was closer to the door she swore she could hear sniffling— choked back, quiet sniffling. “Alec,” she called gently, “Are you alright?”

“...yeah.”
The voice was quiet, unsure. Sat on the toilet Alec stared at his wet pyjama bottoms in disbelief, and tried not to pay attention to the puddle on the floor even if he had made it at least some of the way.

”You sure...? You’ve been in there a little while, that’s all, and I—“

”Miller, don’t you have somebody else’s business to poke your nose into?” Hardy snapped.

”Alec, I want to—!”

“Miller, just— just go away!”
Ellie recognised that tone of voice all too well; a weak bite that didn’t really have anything packed behind it and meant entirely the opposite. “Alec, I’m sorry but I don’t think I quite believe you...” She jiggled the doorknob. “Please, open the door.”

Alec sniffled. There was a moment of silence before, ever obedient to Ellie’s gentle caregiving tone (if there was anybody who knew what to do, it was Ellie) he unlocked the door.

Ellie praised herself for taking in the scene remarkably quickly. Alec, sat on the toilet, pyjama bottoms almost see-through and sticking to him with wetness on the thighs. Small puddles collected and ran into one another on the floor. Alec, wet-eyed, snivelling, red on the cheeks. It was the first time Ellie had ever seen him cry and it made all of those maternal, caregiver instincts itch as they flooded her body. “Oh, Alec...” she cooed at him, voice falling to softness with realisation. She stepped inside the bathroom gingerly as if it was a crime scene, looking him over. “You’re okay, it was just an accident!”

”I- I tried-!” Alec hiccuped, nodding rapidly, voice swollen with tears. “Tried... I just...”

”Oh I know, Alec,”—She bit back the instinctual ‘sweetheart’—“you’ve done so well. Okay...” she looked around the bathroom, frantic for a moment, and finally unrolled a handful of toilet tissue over one hand, “Let’s get you cleaned up, hmm? Bottoms off, please!”

Alec wanted to listen, he really did. Ellie’s voice was as sweet and as compassionate as it ever could be and rather than be embarrassed his subordinate was seeing him in such a position he relished the pin pricks of relief that rained down upon his skull. Had he taken his proper dosage the thought of cleaning up himself and the bathroom, while embarrassing, was a drop in the ocean. Without it he felt... tiny. Tiny and swamped by the gargantuan responsibility of having to shower himself and clean up the floor... so for Ellie to help was a weight off of his shoulders. “I... I can’t.” He whimpered out.

”Can’t...? Whaddyou mean, ‘can't’?” Ellie frowned, flushing the toilet tissue away once the floor was clean.

Alec sniffed, bunching his wet pyjama bottoms in both fists. “I don’t have a change. Last fresh set.”

’This has happened before’ was sewn neatly in between the lines—Ellie glossed over it for now because asking Alec if he’d ever thought of using protection seemed like a step too far at the moment—and asking him how he thought he’d survive without needing to bung some of his clothes in the washer at some point likely wouldn’t get answered either. She nodded, understanding all the same, thoughts rolling around her head and gaining traction. “...alright. You have undies, though? Fresh ones?”

A nod.

”Fresh uniform for tomorrow morning?”

Another nod.

Ellie shrugged. “Well, fresh undies on, then. I’ll nip home with your dirty clothes, wash them, and you can have them back tomorrow. Easy.”

Alec nodded. He shuffled out, retrieved a fresh pair of boxers, and shut himself in the bathroom once more.
~

”Ellie?” Alec scrunched the bedsheets in his hands and fidgeted in the bed that suddenly felt too big for him.
Ellie was on her way out of the door, the night drawing in later and later. He almost didn’t want her to leave but saying that felt scary somehow.

”Hmm?”
Ellie turned. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips to see him buried beneath bedsheets, pacifier in one fist, tiny elephant in the other. Suddenly all the things that made Alec who he was - the heavy brow, the stern glare, the beard - they melted away, and he looked as small and as vulnerable as Fred. And to hear him call her ‘Ellie’ was the cherry on top of the very sweet cake. Rightly so, she supposed. Little Alec had no need to worry about work.

“...you’ll bring my clothes back, tomorrow?”

”Yes. You take your pills in the morning, like normal, and we’ll go to work, and then when we finish work I’ll pop here with you and give you your clothes. Okay?”

A thoughtful nod. “Here?”

”Here.”

Alec fidgeted again, whispering. He looked hesitant for a moment, but also too Little to care about it at that moment. “...can you bring Play-Doh? You said you’d bring Play-Doh.”

Ellie giggled. “I’ll see what I can do, Alec. No promises!” even if she was already mentally preparing to snaffle away a few tubs and cutters from Fred’s toy-box when he was at nursery.
(He’s too young for it anyway, and not having to scratch orange dough out of the grouting of the bathroom with one fingernail would be a blessing. Then again, who said Alec would be any better?)

Alec smiled. Eyelids heavy even though he’d not long napped. “...night, Ellie.”

”Night, Alec.” Ellie returned the smile on her way out, flicking the light off and plunging the room into calm darkness— and Alec, into a peaceful sleep.

Chapter Text

Sitting in his office, Alec tried his best to force the memories of that night out of his mind. For some reason, he couldn’t quite let it go just how soothing it had been to fall asleep with Miller nearby and a pacifier in his mouth. Even in the middle of the night, in the darkness, long after Miller had left him—usually when a nightmare would dig its long yellow talons right into his brain—just nestling back into his pillows and suckling idly at his pacifier (with a quick check that his elephant was nearby, of course) was enough to dissolve any of his fears.
And that… that had never happened before, not before Miller had actively encouraged him into using his pacifier. The problem was that even now, the memory wouldn’t leave him. He sort of expected it to be a one off, not for it to barge in like some sort of new coping mechanism.
As he hunched down over his desk and looked over all the case work they had compiled up so far, every now and then his mind would drift back to a time when he was snuggled up in bed, pacifier in his mouth, either half asleep or lazily watching Biker Mice from Mars.
…Don’t you wish you could be in bed right now, mmm? naughtily whispered the tiny voice in the back of his head, deepening the tiny crack in the shields he had put up against his Littlespace. With it, he felt himself slip ever so slightly mentally too. Not entirely—not enough to turn him into a big snivelling baby right there in his swivel chair, of course, but enough for him to not have the best grasp on what his casefiles actually said or what he should have been doing. It… unnerved him, to say the least. He had never had these sorts of lapses in judgment, not before, and it wasn't fair - he was taking his pills like everything was hunky-dory, so why the bloody hell didn't they work?
After a couple of minutes of trying to make sense of the squiggles, Alec ran his hand over his face and shakily rose to his feet.

…Tea. Yeah. He needed tea. That’d sort him out.

“…tea, sir?” Miller asked, bumping into him while he was on the way out of his office. She always seemed to know what he needed. Funny that.

“Yeah, thanks.” Alec nodded.
~

They had tea. That made it sound as if it was some sort of candlelit domestic affair but it was not; it was the pair stood across from one another in the shitty office kitchen, sipping in tandem and not quite meeting one another’s gaze.
Miller didn’t bring up… that night—something for which Alec was grateful.
Something in the back of his brain prodded at him to bring it up himself, but the squirming, vomit-inducing embarrassment that even the thought of doing so produced was enough to press him into keeping his mouth shut. “Thanks for the tea, Miller.” He hummed, draining his cup a little quickly (if only to stop himself from blurting something incredibly embarrassing aloud, like, ‘oh, I sort of wish we could do that again now that my pills aren't working, isn't that weird’ because he was a bloody DI what sort of a DI does things like… that with their bloody subordinates) and allowing for a tiny smile to sweep across his features.

“No problem, sir.” Miller smiled into his back (he didn’t see it, turned away, but he could feel it).
He retreated to his workspace as re-energised as he could possibly manage, Littlespace washed over and subdued with too-much too-sweet tea.
~

Sat at his desk, Alec found it not too difficult to get lost in his work again. Somehow his writing flowed easier, the words clicked into place sooner; he chugged his way through file after file like it was nothing. He always liked it when he got into that sort of headspace—when he worked so hard the world around him melted away and it was just him and his pen and all the murmuring chatter of the office around him blurred into quiet nothing.
There was just—well, there was just one downside. When he was so lost into his work… everything unimportant drifted away. “Sir?” he heard Miller call somewhere in the distance, but mumbled grouchily to bat her away—which worked. Except there was another voice.
A tiny and dreamy sort of voice—not like Miller’s—that floated and whispered not-too-close but not-too-far from his ears calling to him. Calling over…
…and over
and over once more.
It was quiet at first and Alec found that if he shifted slightly the voice was pleased and drifted away again. But soon, shifting wasn’t enough to please it. The voice grew impatient.
ALECALECALECALEC, it said, but Alec whined and tugged his legs in tighter at the ankles, still firmly ignoring it. The voice was not perturbed. It did not stop whining at him this time; in fact it shouted even louder than before and jumped up and down for good measure. Groaning, Alec pushed away his paperwork and put his head down onto the desk, wishing that the voice would just bloody shut it.
…and then… it did.
Oh. Well, if it was that easy…
Alec shifted slightly once more and bent his head ready to get lost in his work again, shuffling paperwork—but another sensation came to his attention. A warm sensation.
…A- a warm and wet sort of sensation that had been dripping quietly down the inner lines of his thighs for a decent handful of seconds. He bit back a choked sound of disbelief because in the second he had decided to uncross his legs-- so the knot was untied and what was a tiny little dribble of a stream decided to twist into a big hot burst. Alec froze (oh, as if that’d suddenly make everything grind to a halt), palms flat and clinging to the desk. This could not be happening. This could not be happening, not—not here, not at his desk, not where anybody—Miller!—could walk in and see him!
Letting out a low moan of exertion, he tightened his legs helplessly and felt his muscles jump. Oh, please--! Not here, please not here but the warm wetness spread all over his thighs and trickled under his bum like an unwelcome sneaking intruder.
(His work uniform was too thin, he found himself realising - when this happened… at home, in bed… his pyjamas and bedsheets at least drank in some of the damage. But his suit was thin and rather than absorb everything his body had decided to void out, it gushed into the padding of the wheely-chair he was sitting on.)
Alec stared at his midsection, mute, as the dark patch spread across his trousers, tiny puddles glistening in the wrinkled fabric. When his trousers were soaked to their limit the puddle crept across the padding of his chair, painting the seat a dark navy. He must’ve stayed like that – staring in horror at all this pee that just wouldn’t stop! – for ages and ages; or at least that was what it felt like. And then his body had the audacity to, once the last trickles had dripped out, jolt with relief as if he had just had the piss of a lifetime. Heh... If Alec had to describe how he was feeling, ‘relieved’ wouldn’t quite have been up there.
Embarrassed, definitely.
Ashamed, of course.
Cold, because it was only a matter of seconds before the once-hot puddle cooled and his trousers sagged with heavy wetness. And then… then he sort of got that feeling; the same feeling he’d had on that night, like he was pulled out of his own head and the thought of having to clean himself up, clean up the chair he was sitting on, get into a fresh change of clothes all while trying to make sure none of his colleagues saw him felt like too much.
Miller would help you.
…His first thoughts as, trembling, he came to terms with the mess he had created, were of Miller. Typical.
Miller helped you before. She would help you right now. She made you feel safe.
Alec thought for a little bit longer about trying to clean up by himself. His belly squirmed in shame. Then he thought about asking Miller. Having to get up and retrieve her, soaked through, with anyone able to see his accident. Having her know he had wet himself uncontrollably, in the middle of the day, like a—

like a—

like one of them.
…No. Oh, no. Alec was just going to have to find a way around this by himself.
~

Ellie finished her tea a little while after Alec, humming as she put her mug into the sink. Watching him leave had only brought that night even closer to the forefront of her mind. It needed addressing at some point, and Alec was being silly if he thought otherwise. Perhaps not now, not while they were at work, but it still needed addressing. Then again… well, Ellie hadn’t had a Little to look after in so long (before Joe, even, who was a baseline and uninterested in such things)—of course she had Tom to worry about (and prepare for his classification at sixteen) and Fred was still so small and dependent… but somehow, parental duties didn’t quite scratch the itch enough. Soothed it massively, no doubt, but there was just… something about caring for a Little that gave off something just a little bit different. Like aloe-vera on sunburn; a slow burst of bliss. So… so perhaps this was her… jumping at the chance, at the first Little she saw. Maybe they weren’t quite the right fit.
Still, the worst he could say to her was no…

“Sir?” Ellie smiled, knocking and then peering around his door. He didn’t murmur to say she could come in but she could see that he was sat at his desk and as far as she was concerned that meant he could be interrupted for a couple of minutes. She smiled. “I just wanted to make sure you got your clothes ba—”

“Miller!” Alec barked in terrified surprise, his head snapping up. “Miller, what the hell are you doing in here?” He didn’t move, tucking his legs in tighter against one another under his desk. Getting up so soon after soaking himself (seriously, she had some ridiculous timing) was a no-no; even as he sat there he could feel the pee ready to run down his legs. Blood roared around his ears and his heart thudded so much that for a long moment he thought his heart really had given in. She could help you… purred the teasing little voice in the back of his head, urging him to tempt fate. She helped before. She never judged. Say it. Tell her.
He teetered. It was on the tip of his tongue, ready to give in to the breakdown his Littlespace so badly wanted and plead for Miller to help clean him up tenderly and quietly like she had before.
But… but he was at work. Everybody would know about his classification then, and that would make him a laughing-stock, bumped right down to the bottom of the pecking order.
Work Alec and Little Alec had to be kept firmly apart. That was the whole damn point of taking the Goddamned useless bloody pills that didn’t work any more, in the first place.
“What is it with you and poking your nose into my bloody business? You’ve got work to do!” he managed to spit out spurred on through angry adrenaline—and just hoped that Miller wouldn’t quite detect the little strangled quiver in his voice as he tried to keep himself (or at least his work self) together.

But if Alec thought that she didn't, then he really was very stupid. Firstly, Ellie was a detective, and a really rather astute one at that. Secondly, she was a Caregiver, so it was practically stitched into her DNA to keep an eye out for any distressed Littles. Thirdly, she was a mother, for Heaven’s sake. Mothers just… knew intuitively when their child was in distress (or, at the very least) hiding something from them. It just happened.
“Charming,” She quipped, but nodded obediently and twisted on her feet. He had one of those kinds of tones to his voice that suggested she was creeping closer and closer into trouble if she continued, and Ellie knew when to tempt fate and when to not.
Although… well, there was juuuust that tiny seed of doubt in the back of her mind, that his voice had sounded like it was trembling, just a pinch—the sort that happened just before you began to cry. Moving out of his office, she paused in the doorway again. “…you sure you’re alright, Sir? Just, I dunno, you seem a bit..” she cocked her head, drinking him in now. “…off.”

“I’m fine, Miller.” Alec muttered tensely. His clothes were beginning to dry off now, and giving him that awful cold itching sensation – which meant a rash was imminent if he didn’t change soon.

“I just wanted to make sure you got your clothes back, is all.” She smiled, trying to find an in. “I left them in reception for you when I couldn’t get an answer at the door and then worried all the way home in case somebody chucked them into lost and found or, I dunno. Stole them.”

“Nope. Fine, thanks Miller.”

Ellie was ready to ask him what was wrong, words pooling on her tongue, but the frown-filled stare he was fixing on her made her (for a rare moment) reconsider. Nodding, she stepped away from Alec’s private little sanctum and left him alone, heading back to her desk. She regretted it, of course, when all the neurons in her brain went colliding into one another screaming SOMETHING IS WRONG. SOMETHING IS WRONG AND YOU JUST LEFT HIM.

Except, well, he was hardly her Little to fuss over. Even if he was she very much doubted he’d let her in at the moment.

In his office, Alec winced at the sensation of his cold, heavy suit and closed his eyes, trying to keep a grip on his frazzled thoughts. Maybe if he took lunch early he could sneak off and change? The chair… the chair was sodden but that could wait for now. Sighing, he ambled a little unsurely out of the office, coat tugged overprotectively around himself so no one would see the wet patch. He almost – almost – wished he’d asked for help after all.

Chapter Text

“I don’t see why I have to come with you,” Alec whined, feet clunking sulkily against the sandy rock floor as he dragged them just to prove a point. “I didn’t want to come with you. I have work to do.”

“Well, you’re here now, aren’t you?” Ellie sighed, squeezing the handles of Fred’s pram just to stop herself from shouting at her superior. Any other time and she would’ve, except Fred had just nodded off and she didn’t fancy waking him up just yet. Well, that and as a mother she knew when to indulge sulkiness and when to ignore it entirely. “You must’ve wanted to come just a little bit, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

“…don’t get smart, Miller.”

One day. Hell, not even a day. One bloody afternoon. That was all she had asked of him. Like a gesture of goodwill, perhaps, a little nod to say I-know-what-we-did-and-I-don’t-care - and also, selfishly, a pang for comfort. She wanted him to go to her, she would rather him go to her and fall into the deepest little-space he had than take those bloody awful pills again. Ever since that night in the hotel he hadn’t brought it up again; he had put up those stupidly infuriating shields and the atmosphere hanging around the pair had gotten all the more unbearable if that was even possible. He had gone on and taken his pills and been as grouchy as anything… with a hidden undercurrent that he was longing for that night, again. Ellie was sure she wasn't imagining it.
She had tried, twice. The first came the very next day when she dropped his fresh clothes back to the hotel, plopping three tubs of Play-Doh and a handful of cutters as promised—but aside from a whisper of a smile he said nothing and turned away from her, frosty. The second time, she had caught him at work, but the minute she had opened her mouth to shape the words he had cut her off with a sharp, “No, Miller!” which was bloody cheeky because how did he know what she was going to ask her, exactly?
This—this was her last resort. “Look, just—just come out with me. Tomorrow.” She burst for a third and final time, cornering him at his desk again. “I need someone to entertain Fred for a bit and I need—I need someone to talk to, okay? All this stuff going on with Joe… Tom…” she ran a hand through her hair and tried to keep the tears at bay because Christ the last thing she ever wanted to do was start blubbing all ugly-snotty at Alec of all people. “I just want to go for a walk, through the arcade. You can stand there, you don’t have to talk or do anything, just come with me.” She pleaded.
Partly that was her desire for company seeping through, especially now that Danny’s killer had been revealed as- as- as him—but partly it was the need to care for someone coursing through her body, spurring her on. Being so wrapped up in the case meant she had missed out on so much quality time with Fred that she would jump at the chance to get some more—and if the newly-Little Alec would come with them, then that was a plus point. That was another benefit; maybe if she encouraged Alec to come along she could chip away at those walls he had built up high again and knock them over, because if she was itching so badly to be a Caregiver again she knew Alec’s body would be telling him he needed his Littlespace.
In his pram, Fred whimpered and wriggled as he woke from his (unfortunately very short lived) nap. “Oh no, look who woke up early!” Ellie cooed, voice slipping into her trademark velvety Caregiver tone, peering over the hood of the pram at Fred wriggling tiredly. “That’s alright, you’re just excited to spend some time with Uncle Alec, aren’t you?”
Alec bristled at the nickname, wrinkling his nose; Ellie pretended not to notice. Moving onto the promenade, she relaxed in comfort as they bathed under the soft glowing fairy lights. “Oh, I love the arcade.” She sighed happily. “Used to bring Tom here all the time when he was little. Let him drain my pocket on the 2p machines.”
Family time. Family time she doubted she’d ever get back now thanks to that utter, utter wanker.

Alec grunted. He didn’t mean to, not really-- but skipping his pills (yes, even if it was just the once) was messing with him. He sort of felt like he was floating around somewhere outside of his body, like Miller was far away. Piled on top of that was a pounding, splitting bloody headache, made worse by the blazingly bright lights that sort of made his vision blur. And then… and then Miller had to go and nag him into coming to the arcade. On a normal day, on a normal two-pills-a-day-no-skipping he would have felt entirely fine about it… but now? Now it was all so… so overwhelming. He loved the arcade. The bright, hyperactive colours; the teddies flopping forward waiting to be chosen by the claw, glass eyes glinting; the swirling, mingled smells—oh, the smells!—buttered popcorn in tubs, candy floss swirled on sticks, blisteringly hot sausages bursting out of their skins nestled in pillowy rolls with ketchup. The sounds; children cheering, coins jangling, enticing music. He loved, like Ellie, the memories of trailing around after an excited Daisy to try time after time to win her a Disney Princess out of the claw machine or letting her win at air hockey. But there was another part of him, squashed down small like a piece of origami, that loved it because it made him feel excitedly, blissfully Little.
Tess had tried to squash those feelings right out of him, and although she had majorly succeeded… there was still that tiny glimmering spark waiting to be ignited. When he was forcing pill after pill down his throat the spark was smothered well enough but now… now he had missed his pills he could feel that spark fluttering away unbothered: the excitement building in the pit of his gut, the fogginess creeping in at the corners of his brain… the spark clearly not smothered well enough. And yet the thought of being like that again, of being out of control of himself was terrifying. It… it was different when he was in the Traders, in the relative privacy of his hotel room with only a very gentle and encouraging Miller. This was in public. This was with Fred. Yes, Fred was two years old and unlikely to understand what was going on with his so called ‘Uncle Alec’ and his mother any time soon—but—but what if Miller just… wanted to spend time with Fred, and not with him? Miller wanted him to babysit, yes…?
He tried to quash the sensation of a rising Littlespace, but between the effort of that and his pounding headache he barely registered what Miller was saying to him other than the fact her mouth was moving a mile a minute.
And so he grunted.

“You know what?” Ellie turned around to face him, the very last string holding her nerves together snapping clean away. “Fine.” She swept her hand, gesturing to the steps leading away from the promenade, and at the same time was so aware that her voice was beginning to shake in stressed upset. “You want to leave, you leave. I am not spending an afternoon with you if you’re going to stomp around and have a face like a slapped arse all day. God forbid I want a bit of support. I’d get more from a bloody toddler.”
She sighed out, breath rattling, grasping at anything to help her calm down. Instantly guilt punctured her heart; it was rare that she shouted at any Little unless it was absolutely necessary, and the same went for her children. First and foremost, though—he wasn’t even her Little to shout at, he was her boss. She had just shouted. At her boss. Breathing out again, heavily, she rubbed her temples, and decided very quickly to blame it on the stress of all the other shit going on in her life at the moment. Maybe, just maybe, Alec would think the same.

One look at his face told Ellie he was not thinking the same. In fact one look at his face made misery twist up in her chest because shit, he wasn’t even giving her the ‘you’re getting a disciplinary’ sort of look.
He was breathing heavily. The tell-tale kind, the kind you do when you’re trying to keep yourself from shouting or bursting into tears. The delayed reaction fell into her chest with a sickening thud. “…Sir, I’m sorry, I- I just--!”

“Oh, it’s fine.” Alec nodded, fighting around the lump that was now brewing in his throat and praising himself for keeping his voice nice and even. That sensation in itself—throat closing, tear choking upset—was an entirely new sensation he found he was having to get used to a lot more since messing around with his pill dosage. He was not a crier. He never cried. Except apparently he did and apparently it was about stupid things like Ellie telling him he was too grumpy—too much of a toddler!-- to hang around with. Even if he knew deep down underneath it all that she was right, it still hurt because sometimes it just felt like too much of an effort to pull himself out of it. It was terrifying. Sometimes he wanted someone else to pull himself out of it but Ellie never noticed, she just turned away. It punched him in the stomach, a sickly sour reminder of Tess when she decided she wanted nothing more to do with him if he carried on being Little. Time repeated itself. Time always repeated itself.
Tears building in his eyes, he turned away so she wouldn’t see them and blinked a few times, angrily. “…It’s all just fucking peachy, Miller. You go, I wouldn’t want to ruin your perfect day out.”
Stomping off, he was very aware of Miller coming after him for a few unsure paces. He almost hoped she’d keep up, keep chasing, keep wanting him—but her footsteps died off.
~

“You are going to sit there and you are going to eat these chips. I don’t want to hear one bloody word out of you about how much you hate them, you useless bloody Scotsman. Sit. Eat.” Miller insisted, slamming down a sodden-with-grease paper-tray of chips onto a nearby picnic table.
After a hour and a half of silence he had given in and called her, sobs clinging to his voice, pleading that he was sorry and that she come and get him. After another half a bloody hour of driving (he couldn’t recognise where he was through sheer, hurtling-into-Littlespace panic, and so was useless on the directions front) she had found him wandering around a derelict country road on the way out of Broadchurch. How he had got there on foot she didn’t know, but just the sight of him, suit all unruffled, pale faced and teary eyed, was enough to make her Caregiving instincts increase tenfold.
…Even if her instincts to bloody throttle him were stronger than ever.

Alec looked up at her, frowning, but a tiny part of him was thankful that she was being so insistent with him. It meant security, it meant safety, and when he didn’t have a clue what was going on in his body he wanted to grab at the first thing that comforted him. Sniffing, he stabbed a chip with his little wooden fork and chewed slowly at it. “…Miller?” he asked hesitantly—testing the waters—after ten or so minutes of picking at his chips in silence.

“Mm?” Ellie mumbled through a mouthful of chips, passing a small handful to Fred.

“Miller, something… something weird is going on. With me. With my body.” He mumbled, flushing an uncomfortable shade of pink.

“You’re taking those pills, Sir. What did you expect?” she said, looking at him properly this time. It came out perhaps a bit harsher than she had wanted and he flinched; a movement that drove guilt into her core and made her realise just a little too late, that it was probably an unnecessary jab. “…sorry.”

“No.” he picked at the chip-paper quietly. “You’re right. But it’s like… it’s like they’re not working any more.”
He swallowed, thick, his voice suddenly a little more choked up than he would’ve liked. Except… well, that was exactly the problem. All he ever seemed to feel like doing was crying—and he was Alec Hardy, he was hard as nails, he never cried. If he didn’t want to cry he wanted to shout, really properly, like a toddler who had been denied some sweeties before dinner, and if he didn’t want to do either of those things then his head had a constant ache in it. He had found that he was reaching for his pacifier at least six nights out of seven, and his tiny elephant companion was constantly tucked into the pocket of his coat to ground him for a handful of minutes during the busy work day. “…I mean.” He stared down at his chips. It felt better somehow to talk through them, as if he could pretend Miller wasn’t there and that this conversation was barely happening. “I pissed myself the other day.”

The atmosphere tightened like a noose, pulling the conversation to a tense stop. As if that was something you just came out with in front of your subordinate, like it was as tame as saying 'oh how bad that thunderstorm was last night?'.
“…Oh.” Miller murmured, stuffing a chip into her mouth just for something to do—something to stop herself from gasping out, ‘I was right all along!’.
She wasn’t disgusted, far from it. She was a mother; a caregiver through and through—it was hardly as if a little piss disgusted her by now. In fact, it barely even surprised her. Alec was as much a Little as she was a Caregiver and she had experienced first-hand his… issues downstairs… that night in the hotel. It wasn’t that particular issue that worried her so much; it was his reaction to her finally sighing and saying exactly what she thought: that he really should have looked into getting himself some… protection. “Well, maybe—maybe your body still has to adjust to your pills again,”—was what she settled for at last, lamely—“I- I mean, first they lowered your dosage at the hospital and then you went without, so…” Shrug. “S’just a little blip.”

Alec wasn’t sure what he was expecting from Miller when he just came out with something like that; but somehow her totally non-plussed reaction was disheartening. Perhaps it was the fact that he knew deep down it wasn’t the result of messing with his pills.
Perhaps it was the fact that his classification really was something he needed to come to terms with (again).
…or, perhaps it was the fact that he didn’t want to—or couldn’t—come to terms with it by himself… that he needed Miller to help him through it whether she led him gently by the hand or dragged him kicking and screaming backwards by the scruff because she was a caregiver (and wasn’t that what they were meant to do for Littles?!) but here she was, saying nothing. “…Yeah.” He sniffed eventually, voice oddly wobbly but as grown up as he could make it. “Yeah. You’re right. Little blip.”

Ellie smiled sympathetically, scrunching up her chip-paper and rising to her feet. “Come on, you.” She nodded down at Hardy while moving to take Fred’s pram off of its brakes. “Let’s go and have an hour in the arcade.”

Chapter Text

The arcade was different, Alec found, when he didn’t have his daughter with him but instead the knowledge he could go wherever he pleased (and not have to play Dance Dance Revolution for the millionth time). If he thought outside was overwhelming, the arcade itself was triply so. Blaring lights wherever he looked, that jangly music over and over in his ears, entire zoos of animals clustered in the claw machines.
Anybody who took a glance at Hardy and Miller and Fred in his pram would have assumed that they were a rare couple of Baselines and their child.
…Anybody who wasn’t a caregiver, that was. Alec, clinging to the handle of Fred’s pram, excited smile so wide it overgrew his face, twirling around to get compute everything – a Baseline?
No. In fact it had never been so blatantly, obviously, clear that Alec Hardy was deliciously, excitedly, bouncingly Little. Ellie loved it. She loved how he couldn’t hide the obvious glee in his face, how he twisted and craned his neck to look at everything just like Fred did. At one point, she caught his gaze and cracked a smile. “Fancy anything?”

His gaze went sheepish instantly and he drew his thumb to his mouth, making out he was chewing at his thumbnail. “Wha’duz Fred wan’do?” Ellie managed to decipher, and she chuckled in disbelief. “I’m here with you too, Alec. Choose. I think Fred will be happy looking at the pretty lights. Won’t you, Freddie?”
She reached down and ruffled up his hair cheerfully; he gurgled.
“…That was a yes,” his mother translated, and smiled as Alec barrelled toward Stacker.

They played three games of Stacker (Alec eyeing up the Nintendo DS up on the ‘Major Prize’ shelf) but even when Alec concentrated as hard as he could, he couldn’t get the blocks all in a row, so off he ran – coming to an excited stop in front of the air hockey table.
“Can you play with me?” he requested – in such a soft and plaintive voice that Ellie found it very difficult to say no.
“Of course, Alec.” She beamed, parking Fred’s pram in front of the table. “C’mon, Freddie, watch Uncle Alec beat Mummy at air hockey.” She joked. Her gaze drifted to Alec as she loaded the pennies into the machine and grabbed her pusher. “Winner gets a prize, yeah?” she winked.
The smile Alec returned to her was full of bashful excitement; he leaned against the air hockey table in interest and bounced slightly. “What prize?”

Ellie’s face gleamed. “Whatever you want.”

They played another three games of air hockey. Two for fun and then a third as a decider. It had cost her £6 but it was worth it to see Alec loosen up a bit more. The frown on his face grew in concentration, his tongue pressed ever so slightly against his lips and his shoulders slackened as he leaned over to slam the puck toward Ellie’s goal.
She had won one game and then Alec had completely and utterly trodden over her during their second round. She began their final round, though, with no intention of even attempting to win – flunking a shot over here, letting a goal in over there.
As the timer beeped to zero and the unmistakeable sound of the puck clunking into Ellie’s goal filled the air Alec straightened out in slow shock.
“I… I won…?” He quickly began to sport a disbelieving grin but his voice was tinged with gently childlike teasing and a healthy dose of excitement. “Beat you, Ellie.”

“Oh, no!” Ellie sighed in faux upset, grinning. “Fair and square, Alec. Great job!”
She looked around at the arcade slowly. “What do you want? Candy floss? Lollipop?”

Alec shrugged. He hadn’t really paid much attention to the prize Ellie offered to give him, more concerned with actually beating her and also just the slightest pinch influenced by his big side which sat in the back of his brain scoffing at even the thought of getting a prize. “I don’t know. I’ll think of something.”

Ellie nodded quickly. She had turned her attention to Fred who was making his discomfort known as he strained against the straps of his pram and grizzled unhappily, tears pearling in the corners of each eye. It was a sound that made Ellie’s spine tingle in upset and she ‘oof’ed slightly in between unclipping the toddler from his pram and lifting him into her arms. “Alright, then. Well, I think this little one is tired of being in his pram, aren’t you?” she cooed, in what Alec thought was a really rather silly baby voice. “I think you want to play too, don’t you?”

Fred shifted in his mother’s arms, looking around and leaning toward the claw machines excitedly, chubby little starfish hands outstretched in glee with a string of dribbly gurgles to match. Typical, Ellie thought, as she looked in the direction her youngest son was enamoured with. One of the claw machines, right on the end, stuffed with Teletubbies. “Oh!” Ellie beamed, bouncing the little boy. “I know, you want a Laa-Laa! Come on, Uncle Alec,” she sang in the same silly baby voice, turning toward him. “Let’s go and play on the claw machines. I bet you can win a Laa-Laa.”

Alec smiled a little shyly at the caregiver, looking at his feet as he offered a hesitant nod. Something about watching Ellie with Fred made him feel… funny, like, all squirmy on the inside. He sort of felt like he was interrupting their family day all of a sudden even if he knew he wasn’t, not really. “Ok.” He decided - and made a firm effort to stay a little bit away from Miller and Fred so they could play on the claw machine together.
…which lasted all of five minutes, of course. “The Teletubbies are boring.” He groused, wrinkling his nose as Ellie loaded the machine with coins and pointed the claw at Laa-Laa who was lying face down with her bottom in the air.
“Ahh, Fred loves the Teletubbies, don’t you sweetheart?” she said, half cooing to Fred and half speaking to Alec while watching the claw grab the toy.

Alec mumbled a noise of unhappiness and shook his head, gaze drifting across the row of identical machines. One of them caught his gaze and forced him to hold it there – a machine full of animals. An elephant, a tiger with bright orange fur, a giraffe, chubby grizzly bear twins… and a bat. A bat with a big puffy belly and green glass eyes and sparkly big wings and if he concentrated hard enough the wings flapped against the peanut-packing floor of the claw machine. Pick me, Alec! said the bat. Gasping, Alec pressed himself against the glass in interest.
“I want to play on this one instead,” he begged Ellie in a rush of excitement, fingers tapping at the glass with one hand, tugging Ellie's coat with the other. “Can I?”

“Ugh!” Ellie groaned as the claw lost grip again before giving in and turning toward Alec. “Of course you can. How much money do you have?”

Alec looked blankly at her.
He hadn’t really thought about money. Money was a Hardy thing, not an Alec thing. Hesitantly he patted down his jacket, finding a crumpled five pound note in one of the pockets and handing it over. Ellie smiled, pocketing the note and passing him five pound coins instead. “Go for it, love.”

Try after try Alec went for the bat. Sometimes he missed completely, sometimes the claw only grazed the wing… and sometimes his aim was pin point accurate – but still the claw’s grip weakened. On his last try, which yielded nothing, Alec tried his best to hold back the tantrum that cascaded like a tidal wave into him. It wasn’t fair! He was trying his hardest—for nothing! “I can’t do it!” He kicked the machine in anger, a move which only drove tears to his eyes when his foot throbbed.

“Hey!” Ellie reprimanded in the tone of voice she only ever used on a tantrumming Fred. Why it came out she didn’t know, because he was hardly tantrumming—but it worked its magic all the same and lulled him to quiet easily. “Come here. Have a go for Fred.” She offered, gesturing to the machine loaded with a final turn.

Sniffling, Alec pressed the buttons sulkily. Up and then across and then the claw went down. He was sulking too much to even watch what the claw was doing. Behind him, Ellie gasped and clasped his shoulders. “Freddie, look what Uncle Alec won!” she cooed, shaking Alec’s shoulders excitedly. “Oh, Alec, look at you! Brilliant!”
Alec frowned, looking up at the claw machine in disbelief just to see the claw open its jaws and release Laa-Laa into the prize chute. Not even Ellie’s praise was enough to whet the snotty ball of jealousy in his tummy. That… that wasn’t fair!
Grabbing the toy out of the machine, Alec held it to his chest with a morose look to his face. It was silly, really; he had never watched or enjoyed Teletubbies even with Daisy. It was too… little for him. But that was his prize.
Thrusting it at Fred who was sat gurgling with his hands outstretched, he whimpered, voice choked. “That’s not fair. I didn’t get mine.”

“You can keep it if you want, Alec.” Ellie soothed, cocking her head.

“I don’t like Teletubbies. I wanted the Bat.” Alec muttered petulantly as he stomped his foot and clenched his fists.
Ellie sighed. She could see shades of both Alec’s big side and his Little side gushing through – both as petulant as one another, after all. “Come on, Alec. I’ll get you a lolly for beating me at air hockey.” She soothed.

Walking around the promenade, Ellie kept her promise of getting Alec a lolly. This involved a lot of deliberation – between the lolly shaped like a dummy and a lolly round enough to cover his face.
He eventually chose the round lolly and licked at it silently as they walked, seeming to come back to himself after a little while. Despite that, Ellie couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. Aside from the tiny elephant, she hadn’t seen any comfort items in his suitcase or in the hotel, so the bat was probably the first thing he had showed any interest in... and yet it had to be locked away from him like that. Her mind whirred as they walked; now and then she stopped in anguished deliberation. Eventually, it was set.
“Can you…” Ellie eyed the door to the arcade, people endlessly filing in and out, and then down at Fred in his pram. The sight of which made her heart seize in happiness; him with his eyes closed, face peaceful, pacifier hanging out of his mouth with that little pearl of drool in the corner – Laa-Laa held in a death grip.
Then she turned her gaze to Alec and her heart fluttered all over again. He still looked really rather small, caught up in the excitement of the arcade even though it was time to leave; brightness in his face, cheeks ruddy and red with the cold sea air; suit and hair all ruffled up from all of his overactive zipping about. He looked just a smidgen too ‘Little’ to be trusted to look after Fred independently… but outside, in front of so many, maybe he’d be fine… someone out here was bound to be a caregiver - and after all, whenever Ellie saw a Little out and about alone she made sure to keep an eye. “Can you look after Fred for me for a couple of minutes?” she asked, smiling. “I just need to nip to the loo. Won’t be more than five, I promise.”

Alec looked at the pram and the sleeping Fred in alarm as though he had been asked to take care of an octopus that was miles away from the ocean – but all the same he nodded. Lolly tight in one hand as if it was a sword. Thumb pressing at his lip.

Ellie nodded and headed off. Five minutes. Three pounds. Three last tries.
~

“So. I got you a present.”
They were on their journey home now, Ellie working to move Fred’s pram through the sand. Alec had remained placid. Ellie had expected him to break down into the mother of all tantrums at the thought of leaving without a new stuffed animal, but the most he did was suck at one corner of his lolly (as a substitute, she realised, for his dummy.)
A smile fluttered onto her face before she could wipe it away as she pulled the pram, herself, and Alec, to a stop. “Close your eyes, okay? Tight!”

Alec murmured in curious excitement, closing his eyes and shuffling a little bit on his feet.

“Hands out!”

The grin spread wider over his face as he held his hands out. Ellie placed something into them. Something that was very plump and very fluffy and tickled at the spaces in between his fingers.

“Okay, you can open your eyes now.”

He opened his eyes… and saw…

“The… the bat!”
The bat, the real bat, with its fluffy plump belly and its little smiley fangs and its ‘crinkly-on-one-side-soft-on-the-other’ dimpled-with-sparkles wings. Ellie got it!
His voice came out in a tiny squeak of utter disbelief. The best kind, Ellie thought – the happy, shocked, excited disbelief of a Little. His gaze—somehow even better than his voice; bright sparkly eyes, a little dewy with tears of surprise that didn’t fall-- snapped from Ellie, to the bat in his hands, to Ellie and back again, before he finally clutched the plump creature to his chest and nestled down against it all blissed-out. “Did you win him? From—from the machine?”

“I did!” Ellie beamed. Seeing him so happy did wonders for the heavy knot in her chest, unwinding it to a happy glowing ball instead. “Mhhhmm. I was telling porkie-pies, see. I didn’t nip off for the loo after all.” She admitted.

Alec looked at the bat, all gooey eyed… but then his smile fell in uncomfy realisation and instead he spoke in a very small and unsure voice, a huge contrast to the happy voice he had adopted a handful of moments prior. “Are you sure? …is.. is it for Fred?”

Ellie looked at him. Her face flooded with disbelief this time around, almost unsure how one Little could get mood whiplash so bloody fast. “…no, sweetheart.”
She dipped her head to try and meet his gaze, even if he was trying to bury himself behind his bat’s wings. “You wanted him, mmm? I won him for you. Fred has Laa-Laa.” Easing the pram onto the road to the Traders she peered over the hood and at her youngest son, curled up asleep (again) and dribbling happily onto the plush neck of his new friend. “…who he loves very much, look.”

Alec hid a private, blissful smile inside his bat. He was quiet from then - alternating between holding his bat by its wings, swinging it around (dangerously close to puddles!) and holding it close to his tummy.
He eventually settled for watching his feet as they walked, clutching his bat at the same time; listening to the quiet crunch of pebbles as Miller wheeled Fred along next to him.

“D’you have a name for him?”

Alec looked at Ellie curiously, scrunching his nose.

“Your bat, silly. Does he have a name?”

Alec looked at his bat. It didn’t have a name, he had never really thought about it. It was just Bat, like Elephant was just Elephant. “…no.” he murmured bashfully. Was he doing something wrong…? Should—should Bat even have a name? “Just… Bat.”

Ellie hummed, amused. “What about your elephant?” she murmured with a voice full of faux concern. “Do you think she’ll be jealous?”
She couldn’t help herself – she had to indulge him at least a little bit. He was speaking in this tiny, unsure, whispered little voice that she’d never heard him use before – a voice that sounded as if he was only just getting used to, too; a voice that told Ellie he was firmly Little at the moment. Maybe if she encouraged him a little when he was feeling like this and he wouldn’t shut down like he usually did with a grouchy, ‘oh, give it a rest, Miller’…

This question took some serious thinking; head cocked, scrunched little brow. Eventually, Alec shook his head. “No.” he squeezed his bat’s wings and smiled at the crinkle noises, “but she might get eaten.”

Ellie gasped, giggling in surprise. “Oh, no! I don’t think she’d taste very nice.”

He scrunched his nose, smiling a little bashfully again. “Me either.”

The smile, although small, stayed on his lips until Ellie led him right up to the door of the Traders, at which point it fell again. Ellie offered him a sympathetic smile; he either didn’t see it or didn’t choose to return it. Truthfully she felt much the same as he did – like the day had been some sort of gentle happy dream cut brutally short by a wake-up call that was just a bit too early.
But that was always what it felt like when your biological needs were satisfied. She almost wanted to say sorry to him, even if he had enjoyed himself in the end. “Here we are, then. D’you want me to pop you up to your room?”

…He nodded before all of the words were even out of Miller’s mouth.
~

Hmm.
The Hotel carpet was really old. It was a faded red, and had ridged blue crisscross patterns, and in every crisscross pattern was a big, flamboyant looking golden flower with dust and dirt ground into its petals. Every now and then there was a dark and suspicious looking splodge or a little curl where the carpet was peeling away. Then there was a crisscross, and a flower, over and over again so many that there probably was an entire flower field here on this carpet…
…There was only so much thinking Alec could do to distract himself from blurting out what he so badly wanted to.
Even then it gnawed impatiently at every corner of his mind. “Miller?” he gave in, letting out a frustrated whisper in between trying to pull his big self up from the deep dark depths of his brain where he was drowning in Littlespace. His voice came out all alien and scratchy, as if he couldn’t make himself say ‘Miller’ when he was feeling Little. Miller was… Miller was work and cases and being professional – Ellie was being Little and cared for and comforted.

“What’s the matter?” Miller asked. She noticed the change in his voice already but decided it was best to keep up her soft Caregiver voice anyway just in case he hurtled again.

“I don’t want to take my pills any more.”

He stared at his feet. “They make me feel…”
A frown. He was in between, now, and while his big side had an incredible vocabulary it wasn’t all accessible to his little self – sort of kept under lock and key, or just out of his reach. He tossed words around in his head for a few seconds, some which slid down his tongue and fizzled like sherbet before he finally bit into the first word that sounded right. “…gross.”

Ellie laughed at him.
It wasn’t the reaction he was expecting; hell, it wasn’t the reaction she wanted to give him, but sheer nerves had pushed the laugh forward; that and the fact that he sounded like he was talking about carrots he had been forced to eat at dinnertime. “Alec, that’s…” she stopped. They were at the door now, his door, and with the extra responsibility of Fred she knew she couldn’t give Alec what he was so obviously hinting for at the moment. “That’s a big decision to make.” A big, blisteringly fantastic decision as far as she was concerned. The sooner he came off of those pills entirely and learned to manage his Littleside the better. Except… there was something else, something else clustered underneath that one sentence that he wasn’t saying and yet here it was coming out loud and clear. I need a Caregiver. I need you and I need this. “I think…” she looked at the door and took a deep breath. “I think you need to think about it overnight, alright?”

Alec frowned, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Miller, what is it with you?” he asked, voice all snappy and high-pitched in upset but trembling too. “One minute you’re telling me to stop taking the damn pills and now you’re saying ‘no, hoof them down willy-nilly, do what you want!’?”

“I don’t mean that.” Ellie closed her eyes for a long moment and then, opening them, squeezed Alec’s shoulder. “I mean… I don’t think you need to be taking those horrible things, no.” I’d look after you. I’ve been looking after you. “But if you’re going to make a decision about it you need to be sure. Who’s talking to me now, mm?” She cocked her head in interest. “Which part of you decided this?” His reckless impulsive little side, and it was so much of an insignificant decision that she might as well have turned on her heel that instant and forgot everything that had gone on between them. But had it come from his bigger side, who had (hopefully) thrown some consideration about work and Daisy and all the other fantastically boring aspects of balancing Littlespace with adult life, things would be coloured differently.

Alec was quiet. “…goodnight, Miller,” was the entirety of his response to that question; although nothing stopped him from squeezing his new Bat as he went.