Work Text:
When Ellie finds Alec at the end of a long work day, hunched over at his desk with all of the lights still on in his office, she decides she’d better make sure he’s not going to be there overnight. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d left at nearly midnight just to come back at eight in the morning and find him in the exact same position, almost as though he hadn’t moved all night. This was especially true now that Daisy was off at uni. It was easier, most nights, to check in with him before she left, which would usually prompt him to remember to leave.
She knocks on the door of his office, but doesn’t actually leave any time before opening it. This turns out to be a mistake. As soon as she enters, she realizes he wasn’t hunched over his work, but in fact the small trash can in his office. The sound of him being sick hits her like an alarm bell and she rushes over, as though she knows what she’s going to do just by being closer to him. Her mild annoyance at his self-destructive tendencies dissipates and makes way for sympathy for his current condition.
“Hardy, are you alright?” she asks, also rather redundantly. He’s clearly not. Now that she can see him closer, she notes that he’s paler than usual, and he’s soaked in sweat. Once he’s done, he coughs a few times, leans back in his desk chair, and struggles to catch his breath.
“Go home, Miller,” he breathes out, closing his eyes as though even the act of sitting is a Herculean effort. She snorts in response.
“Don’t be daft, I’m not leaving you here like this,” she says, though she doesn’t think at this point he’ll be surprised by this insistence. When he doesn’t respond, she continues, “Did you drive today?”
He shakes his head, then winces and puts a hand over his stomach as though even that movement nauseated him. She’s not surprised he walked. Even though he’s gotten his license back, he seems to like going on foot when possible. She wonders if it has something to do with the restlessness that plagues him when he’s stagnant for too long.
“Right then, I’m taking you home. Do you think you can walk?”
He holds up a finger, then leans over the trash can once more and heaves up whatever else was in his stomach. She tentatively puts a hand on his back, then solidifies it as he doesn’t immediately pull away. That itself, his voluntary acceptance of her touch, is cause enough for concern.
“I’ll make it home on my own, there’s no use waiting around for me,” he says, but he sounds even more tired than he did a couple of minutes ago, and there’s no way she’s leaving him here.
“Do you think you’re finished?” she asks, gesturing to the trash can. He nods slightly, and she instructs him to stay put as she takes it to the bathroom to clean it out. She can’t say it’s what she wanted to do with her night, but she’s a mother. It doesn’t phase her anymore. When she returns, his head is on his desk and his eyes are closed.
“Alright, let’s get you home,” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder to get his attention. To her surprise, he nods again, allowing her to help him to a standing position. He wraps one arm around her shoulder and the other around his stomach, and she has to practically drag him to the car. He must be feeling horrible, she thinks, if he’s willing to let her do this.
It’s about the time they get in the car that she sees the message thread on her mobile. She hasn’t paid attention to it for hours. Usually during work hours, she only answers when it’s a call. This typically filters the emergencies from the other duties. However, in this case, she wishes she’d looked at it sooner.
“Looks like the chicken at the staff appreciation thing today was bad. Half the staff’s got food poisoning,” she notes. She looks at him quizzically. Her mind works to make these pieces fit together. For anyone else, reading that message thread would’ve answered questions she wouldn’t even have needed to voice. But for Alec, the world’s pickiest eater, it only raised more.
“Yeah, I’d gathered that,” Alec says through gritted teeth, hugging his stomach tighter.
“But…you didn’t eat chicken. You don’t like chicken,” she says, “You’ve never once eaten at one of those things!”
She’s convinced this didn’t happen, but the evidence in front of her is fairly startling. Alec groans through another cramp.
“Did today. It was the only thing there even remotely worth eating!” He defends, but something’s still not clicking with Ellie.
“This has never stopped you from going hungry before,” she counters. She’s starting to feel a little annoyed, if only because she wasn’t there to see him eat at a work event. She’d spent her break running an overnight bag to the school, since Fred had forgotten about the birthday sleepover he was at this evening and had his teacher calling her frantically to get it to him. She’d assumed she’d be the only one able to get Alec to eat anything.
“Yeah,” he said, dragging out the word, “but I’d just been on the phone with Daisy, and she said she was worried about me, and…well, I promised her I’d have something.”
That explained it pretty well, actually. If it wasn’t her that got him to eat, it had to have been Daisy. If he was going to listen to anyone, it would be one of the two of them.
“Well, she was right, even if you are feeling poorly now. We’ll get you some toast later on, when you’re feeling up to it again.” She feels the need to reinforce this, otherwise she fears he’ll take away the wrong lesson. Unfortunately, at the mention of food, he pales again.
“No. No need. I’m never eating anything ever again.” he says, his face lined with pain.
“You bloody well know neither Daisy nor I will let that happen,” she says, but she doesn’t push the issue. She starts the car, figuring it best to get him home as soon as possible.
She takes him to her house. It’s a Friday night, and Tom and Fred are both out at sleepovers, so she knows she can take him there without being interrupted. She’d been planning on taking the night for herself, maybe taking a relaxing bath and reading a book. Once upon a time, she’d been a reader. That had fallen by the wayside when she’d become a single mother with a full-time job, but she’d been wanting to get back into it. Especially so, now that Tom’s getting ready to start university next year and she’s hoping that the theory that she’ll have more time pans out to be true. But she’s not upset about ditching those plans to care for Alec. He looks so poorly, curled up in her front seat, that she can’t stand the idea of leaving him on his own. And he’s being more receptive to her care than usual, which has left her a bit more on edge about the whole situation that she has been the previous times she’s seen him ill.
She sets him up on her sofa. He makes a strong case for settling in on the bathroom floor, but she vetoes it on the grounds that he’ll feel better lying down on the couch. He doesn’t seem to believe her, but once she’s got him a blanket and a bucket, he seems content enough.
“Can I get you anything else?” She asks once he’s settled. He looks absolutely miserable, curled up around his stomach, his face contorted in pain. He shakes his head, but she pulls the heating pad out of the hall closet and sets him up with it anyways. This seems to help somewhat, because he goes from the fetal position to taking up the length of the sofa, his long legs nearly eclipsing the end.
He’s sick several more times, though. Each time, she rubs his back and whispers to him soothingly, easing him through the pain. She does her best to keep him hydrated, and he doesn’t push her away.
It’s nearly five in the morning when he finally manages to keep down the water he drinks. It’s a relief, because she was getting worried she was going to have to take him to the A & E if the trend kept up. Another hour, and he finally seemed to be improving slightly.
She’s going to suggest he get some sleep when he moves to stand. She puts an arm over his shoulders, keeping him firmly lying down.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asks. He looks up at her with wide, brown eyes.
“I feel gross,” he says, like that’s an explanation. She blinks at him.
“I can imagine. But you won’t feel any better if you get up and start moving around."
“I was going to run a bath.” He explains, and she blinks at him a few times.
“You can barely stand, how did you think you were gonna manage that?” she asks incredulously. He shrugs.
This also puts her in a dilemma. She knows a bath would probably be helpful for him. He’s drenched in sweat, the byproduct of a fever that’s just broken. But she can’t imagine helping him into the bathroom, and she absolutely draws the line at taking off his clothes. She has to draw the line somewhere, and she can’t stand the thought of doing this now.
“You can take a bath after you’ve gotten some rest. Just until you can support yourself,” she says, like she would say it if she were trying to get Fred to eat his vegetables. He groans, burying his face into the side of the sofa. She feels a pang in her heart. “Okay, compromise. I’ll bring you to the sink, and I’ll get your hair washed. You can take the rest of the bath tomorrow.”
He perks up at this, and she breathes a sigh of relief.
He’s tall enough that he can sit in her dining chair and lean his head all the way back to reach the water. This is good, because with the effort it took them to corral him over here, she’s sure he couldn’t have stood the whole time.
She waits until the water is hot, then guides his head back to it. He closes his eyes, and she doesn’t have to see much of an expression on his face.
She’s surprised he’d allow her to touch his hair this much. She runs her fingers through it and watches the strands pull apart as the water hits it. It’s soft, even more so as she massages the shampoo into it. He lets out a small noise as she does, and she wonders if he wants her to stop, but instead he relaxes into the touch. She’s never seen him look so at peace. She keeps going a little while longer, just to prolong the amount of time she knows he feels okay.
She uses a cup to pour some water over his head, running her hands over the fine strands as the soap runs down the drain. His hair is thicker than she’d imagined it being, every time she’d imagined pushing it out of his eyes like she’d done to Tom when he was younger. She wonders how it doesn’t bother him all the time. She pushes it back, now, helping the warm water flow through it until all the soap is gone. He leans into her touch just slightly, and she massages it once more.
When she’s done, she shuts the water off and guides him to sit up. She towels off his hair, and once it’s a bit dryer she almost laughs as she watches it settle back in front of his eyes.
He thanks her, and she waves him off. Of all the times she’s gone through hell to care for him, tonight seemed like a walk in the park. But she doesn’t want to tell him that. Instead, she gives him a half smile.
“No problem at all. Now, how about some toast?”
The look he gives her would’ve made an enemy’s blood curdle. She just laughs at him.