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words-with-wren · 18 days

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@chrumblr-whumblr Day Four: Watching while a loved one is hurt

Fandom: Endeavour. Post 4x04 Harvest. I watched the episode like a week ago and Forgot Details and haven't rewatched it to fact check anything so if something doesn't line up with canon oh well ignore that. I just love Morse and Miss Frazil's friendship SO MUCH i wanted to explore it a little. (May cannibalism this scene if i ever get around to writing my 'joan says yes' au)

word count: 1,563

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Dorothea wasn’t sure when it had happened, exactly, but somewhere through the years her acquaintance with Morse had shifted from a respectful professional relationship to genuine friendship. It was a development that hadn’t been entirely intentional, but there was something about the young man that made her think he hadn’t had much friendship in his life. There was a hungriness about him, a desperate desire to be loved that she was sure he didn’t admit even to himself.

She found him almost on accident, the day after everything at the Bramford power plant had been wrapped up. He was sitting at the bar of the pub, nursing a pint and staring morosely at an untouched crossword in front of him. Dorothea took him in for a long moment, seeing the bags under his eyes, the exhaustion in the way he sat, leaned over the bar. He was staring at nothing, eyes dull and half glazed over, clearly lost in thought.

He looked positively worn out, and Dorothea felt her heart clench at the sight of him. He was so brilliant, so young and full of energy. Had a brain so fast and wonderful, but life had beaten him down so quickly. He didn't share much, but Dorothea had years of investigative journalism behind her--she could read between the lines, could pick out a story in the shapes left behind by absence. Not for the first time she thought he was a man too used to caring and not used to being cared for.

To break the ice, she cleared her throat and sat down at the stool beside him. He started, torn out of his thoughts and the lost expression on his face shifted into a small smile.

“Miss Frazil,” he greeted, shifting his newspaper aside to give her room. She smiled back at him, placing her handbag on the bar. “Can I get you a drink?”

“I'm alright, thank you Morse,” Dorothea answered. She eyed the mostly empty glass in his hands, wondering how many he'd finished before she had arrived. Best not to bring more alcohol into the equation--heaven knows he could drink enough without encouragement.

She started with work, knowing he would close himself off immediately if she pushed too hard too quickly.

“You were at the plant, were you not?” she asked. A wary expression crossed Morse's face, but he seemed to relax a little nonetheless. She thought back to their last conversation, when she had dropped him off by an empty field. He'd opened up then, just a little. Bared himself just enough to show his hurt, but not quite enough for her to do anything about it. “Anything you can tell me?”

The request pulled a small smile from him, something Dorothea was grateful to see. He rolled his pint between his hands and shook his head, turning to look at her. There was a cut along his hairline she noted--that hadn't been there last she saw him.

“I'm afraid not,” he said. He still seemed distant, mind on other things. Not fully engaging in their usual dance as they tried to tease information out of the other.

“The official story is a fire,” she said. His hand drifted to the cut. He nodded.

“Best to leave it at that,” he said. She waited, long years of experience telling her the best way to get information out of someone was to wait. Let him tell her in his own time.

Though it wasn't really what had happened at the plant she wanted to know. Not right now, at least. Like as not, it wasn't going to be anything she could publish anyway.

What she really wanted to know was what was bothering him. It was more than this current case, more even than his flat being burgled earlier in the week. She knew him well enough to see it in the way he sat, the line of his shoulders, the shadows in his eyes.

“Off the record, sabotage,” he said finally. This time he did press his hand to the cut on his forehead. “Some plot by Bagley, planning to leak radiation into the nearby area to prove just how dangerous nuclear energy is.”

Now that would be a juicy story. The part of Dorothea that was pure journalist wanted to dig deeper into it, chase the story, share it with the world. But from the way Morse was hunched, from the sensitivity of the situation, she knew that this would be another story by the wayside. Another time societal requirements won over the truth.

Sometimes she felt a little bitter about that. But she told herself to keep looking forward, finding the next story, uncovering the next truth.

“And you stopped it,” she said and he nodded, his attention still wandering. “You alright?”

It was an innocent enough question, one she knew wouldn't shut him down immediately. There were a lot of ways to answer that, and Morse could choose how much he shared.

“I'll live,” he said. She wasn't surprised by the answer; it was a dismissal, his way of saying he didn't want to talk. Not quite fully a lie, not quite fully vulnerable.

He infuriated her, sometimes. He was so clearly in need of someone looking out for him, but he was so stubborn he refused to accept help, let alone ask for it.

Sometimes she wanted to force him to stop, put him up in her small apartment for a week so she could put some meat on his bones and light in his eyes. Drive it into his stubborn skull that people cared and he didn't have to go at life alone.

“Really?” she asked gently.

He let out a long breath and emptied the last of his beer.

“Still don’t feel entirely safe at home,” he admitted. “Feels too empty.”

She nodded sympathetically. She knew a little about feeling vulnerable in a place that was supposed to be safe--it had been a few months since her kidnapping by Leyton-Asprey, and she still felt uneasy being alone in her office. Coming home to find his space invaded so violently had clearly shaken Morse and she couldn’t find fault in that.

But he was using it as a shield, holding up the reasonable excuse so she didn’t dig any deeper, uncover the actual source of his hurt. Always hiding himself, was Morse. And Dorothea hated not knowing the truth.

She let the silence sit for another moment, pondering her next course of action. It was always a delicate balance with Morse, finding the line between getting him to open up to her without shutting down fully. He needed to come at his own pace, but he needed to know she wanted to know. She wanted to share whatever his hurt was, help him in whatever way she could.

She thought maybe he didn’t have many people he could feel safe opening up to, and she didn’t want to break the trust they had built over the years.

“There was a girl.”

His words came as a surprise, and it took Dorothea a second to process them. He spoke them softly, a mix of hurt and bitterness mingling in his voice.

She thought back to that last conversation in the car on the country road. He’d denied a girl then, a scoffing almost-bitter voice proclaiming he didn’t have anyone. She’d thought it was a laden admission at the time, and now she felt a little vindication.

It wasn’t sweet vindication. Not seeing how he was hunched into himself, not seeing the heaviness in his eyes. Heartbreak, she realised. Not something new to him, she concluded.

“Ah,” she said softly. Morse stared into his empty pint glass.

“She… had some trouble,” he said finally, looking anywhere but at Dorothea. “I couldn’t help her. She didn’t let me help her.”

‘Sounds familiar,” Dorothea thought, expression soft and understanding as she looked at Morse.

“I’m sorry,” she said finally, not knowing how else to help. She was glad he had let her in, glad he had shared at least something. Gently, she reached across the bar to squeeze his forearm.

He started, looking down at her hand and then back up at her, seeming unsure what to do with the unexpected touch. Again, Dorothea couldn’t help but feel he had been so starved of everything a persons should have--love, intimacy, friendship. The knowledge that people care.

For just a moment, he let her in fully. She saw the despair behind his eyes, the grief and loss. The hurt that informed every part of his life, walls and barriers and scars built up after a childhood starved of love and an adulthood seeing the worst of humanity.

Then he shifted, pulling his arm away and looked back down at the newspaper in front of him. The moment was over, the walls were back up. Once again, he locked her out and was alone in his hurt.

Dorothea knew there was nothing she could do for him except just wait until the next time he was brave enough to be vulnerable. For now, maybe that would be enough.

“I’ll buy you a drink,” she said, sensing the companionship would be of more use than anything else right now. He flickered a small, forced smile in her direction and picked up a pen to start filling out the crossword.

#wren writes #endeavour #endeavour morse #itv endeavour #dorothea frazil #endeavour fanfiction #chrumblr whumblr challenge #UGUHGHUG these two #i LOVE their friendship #i LOVE that shes one of the few people he opens up to #eating it #i DO need to rewatch harvest to make sure this lines up fjdhfjd #the scene with morse and miss frazil in the car means so much to me #holding them carefully #anyway took liberties with this prompt #because hurt isnt just physical hehe #and i think the people who care about morse are used to seeing him hurt #or at least seeing him try to hide the hurt

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