The Fourth Time He Fell in Love: Ellie

A/N: I wrote this right after I wrote the first part but I was planning on posting it separately. It's been collecting dust on my hard drive so I figured I'd just tack it on as a second chapter. Same disclaimers apply.

She meets her on a Tuesday.

It's three A.M. and Alec is pacing in the other bedroom above her. He's had some trouble sleeping since he got the pacemaker and she starts to drift off when suddenly she hears the muffled sound of his voice. His footsteps on the stairs follow and she's tossing on her housecoat and running downstairs to catch him in the foyer. He's wide awake and fully dressed and startled by her presence. His face is open and lined with worry.

"Is she –"

"Yeah, she's fine," Alec reassures her, his face softening like it always does when he talks about his daughter. But he's got his shoes on and he's halfway out the door.

"Is it –"

"No," Alec snaps before she can bring up the other woman.

"Then what –"

"Go back to sleep," he tells her quietly and clasps her shoulder gently. "I didn't mean to wake you."

His mobile rings again and he lets go of her to answer it.

"I'll be there in less than an hour," he barks into the speaker and glances at his watch. "She what -? Bloody hell, that infuriating woman – no, I'm coming down there. Can I talk to her?"

He pulls the door shut behind him, almost taking Iris's fingers with it. She slips outside and stands in the cold, watching as Alec shrugs into his coat and struggles to juggle the keys and his mobile at the same time. His attention is somewhere else miles away and his voice is soft now, too soft for her once sharp ears. She thinks he might've been lying about it not being his daughter because even though she can't hear him, she can still see how affected he is by this voice on the other end of a line.

She doesn't go back to sleep.

Six and a half hours later the front door bangs open and she hears him in the kitchen. There's a trail of mud and water leading from the foyer and Iris finds him at the end of it, standing in a puddle of water with a tea towel. He's got his back to her and she thinks that maybe she over reacted and then she starts wondering about where all the water came from and suddenly she's thinking of a troubled little boy walking a mile from a swollen brook carrying -

"Just hold still, damn it!"

"I'm fine!"

"Shut up and let me take care of this."

Iris splashes into the kitchen and Alec whips around. There's a flash of something almost feral in his eyes and he instinctively moves his whole body so that he's blocking her from Iris's view, like he's used to protecting her from something.

"What's going on?" Iris asks, freezing. Alec relaxes when he realizes it's only Iris but he doesn't move or say anything as if he has no idea what to tell her. "Alec?"

Iris steps toward him and Alec shyly shuffles aside as a white hand pushes him out of the way. Iris sees a woman drenched from head to toe with damp curling dark hair and large liquid brown eyes in a ghostly white face. Perhaps it's the way Alec's intently gazing at her and guiltily glancing at Iris, or the fact that this woman is wrapped up in his coat, but for some inexplicable reason, this woman reminds Iris of that sick hopeless puppy that Alec rescued from the brook and dragged into her kitchen decades ago. The woman smiles and even though it doesn't quite reach those sad, dark eyes, Iris notes that there's more there than just a hopeless case.

"Sorry, it's my fault and I'll clean it up –"

"I'll get it," Alec interrupts her. "Sit down, Miller."

"Actually, it's Richardson now, Ellie Richardson," Ellie introduces herself smiling a little bit wider and deliberately ignoring Alec. "You must be Iris?"

Iris can't do much more than nod and give this woman what she hopes is a passably polite smile. It surprises her that Alec's told her who she was, then again they did just storm into her house and flood the kitchen.

"I'll get a mop," Iris decides, surveying the disaster. Where in god's name did all the water come from? "And some blankets," she adds when she sees how wet Ellie is and that Alec's done nothing other than give her his coat. What the hell happened to the poor woman? She's about to ask when Alec silently shakes his head at her. Later. Iris sighs and leaves them.

She gives them ten minutes and comes back to find them both on their hands and knees squabbling over an empty roll of paper towels and a muddy tea towel and a floor that looks just as wet as it did before she left. Iris hands them the blankets and kicks them out of the kitchen because they're useless and too busy arguing to be of any help. She returns to the sitting room with tea to find them still sniping at each other, but there's a pile of wet clothing spread out to dry a little that Iris deliberately doesn't look too closely at and they've both got some color back in their face. Alec keeps getting up to throw another blanket on Ellie or wrap one of them more snugly around her but his tongue is scathing and hers is just as razor sharp. And yet Ellie isn't anything like her quiet Alec, she smiles easily at Iris and can chatter on to the point where she obviously wears on Alec. It's when Iris asks a very simple question about her sons' father that Ellie falters and asks to use the loo. That's when Alec explains in two sentences who exactly Miller is and what exactly Iris saw in her sad eyes. Iris doesn't ask any more questions after that. But she worries as his eyes follow the woman around the room that Alec has found himself another hopeless cause. Then Ellie smacks Alec and she wonders if she's got it all wrong.

Iris collects the empty tea cups and spends a long time in the kitchen trying to figure the pair out. After about five minutes of listening to them arguing she decides she must've been imagining things, but then Alec walks Ellie out and his voice is soft again like a lover's caress. Iris tries not to but she watches them pause and look at each other and then get into the car together.

She waits for Alec when he comes home from dropping her off again wherever he found her in the first place. He comes in cursing Miller and Iris never gets to ask what happened because he goes off on a rant about how irritating she is and tells her instead about what she used to do when they worked together.

Iris gives up trying to figure them out after that.

Four weeks later she breaks her mother's tea kettle, a family heirloom, because she walks in on them snogging in the middle of the kitchen. Not even thirty seconds ago they were having a full out row and suddenly they're so wrapped up in each other that Iris has to shatter a porcelain tea kettle before the rest of the world floods back in on them. Seeing Alec blush like that for the first time since he was young and in love with that other woman is well worth the scalding image. Ellie quickly leaves in embarrassment and Alec gazes after her like a moron until Iris pushes him out the door.

"Go after her."

He does and when he comes back in alone he's smiling.

Two weeks later, Iris invites her over for a cup of tea.

"Are you in love with my son?" she asks her, bluntly. She's not going to ignore her instincts or screw up this time, that's for sure. But Ellie frowns for a moment and she realizes she already has. She must be getting old because for the first time she referred to Alec as her son.

"Alec, my –" Iris starts to correct herself but Ellie smiles and stretches her hand across the table to cover hers.

"I can't help it. Your son's a good man."

The other woman had told her that too, but Ellie squeezes Iris's wrinkled hand and tells her what happened the day he picked her up at three A.M. and later brought her into Iris's kitchen. And then she tells Iris about one of the many times she took Alec home with her and Iris realizes that Alec wasn't as alone as she thought during those dark years that followed the affair.

"Why didn't he ever mention you?"

Ellie blinks and finishes off her tea.

"He never mentioned you either or his daughter, I had to guess her name after months of knowing him… He was a little more open after that…"Ellie trails off and turns her eyes toward the window. Iris's heart breaks for Alec because there was a time when he couldn't stop talking about his daughter. She thinks of the bitter and broken and ill man that had stumbled into her house four months ago and she looks at the woman before her and wonders at her. She reaches across the table and takes Ellie's hand again.

"Thank you," Iris whispers. "He left but I should've –"

"Don't blame yourself, he's the most obstinate man in Britain," she grumbles, looking beyond Iris.

And Alec walks in.

He freezes as they both look at him.

"What's going on?" he asks.

"Nothing," Ellie says innocently and shares a smile with Iris. Alec stares at Iris for a long time and then he slides into the chair between them. Ellie gets up to ring her eldest son and Alec turns to Iris.

"What did you say to her?" He's still tense and his eyes are on the door.

Iris gets up and kisses his forehead.

"She's good for you," she murmurs and passes a hand through his hair.

Alec sighs and relaxes. When Iris returns to the kitchen, Ellie is back and Alec has his chair pushed as close to hers as the table will allow. They don't hear her and Iris steps out of sight to watch them. Ellie says something and Alec moves his hand from the back of her chair to the nape of her neck. He leans closer and brushes his lips over her ear.

"She didn't try to talk you into marrying me I hope," he quips and Ellie smirks.

"No, not yet, but she said it's okay if I take you out on a date, as long as I bring you home by midnight," she teases him.

"Or you could bring me home now…"

They look at each other and Ellie brushes the hair back from his forehead.

"Do you want to come home with me?" Ellie asks seriously.

Alec reaches out and cradles her face within his hands. He brings her closer and presses his lips to her forehead.

"Fred and Tom want to see you again," Ellie tells him and covers his hands with hers.

"Do they?" Alec wonders. Ellie nods and catches at his collar before he can pull away. She tilts her head and kisses him chastely.

"Come home with me," Ellie whispers and rests her temple against his. Alec expels a shaky breath and Ellie drops her head to his shoulder as he curves his arm around her.

"I missed you," he says so softly that Iris almost doesn't hear it.

"I missed you too," she replies.

He turns his head and kisses the top of hers. His eyes close and Ellie rests her hand over his heart.

"Take me home, Ellie," he whispers into her hair. "Take me home."

Iris backs away from the door and even if she had dropped the tea kettle again she doubts they would've noticed. She waits a long time before she walks back into that kitchen and they act like nothing happened but she's already seen everything.

Alec leaves on a Tuesday.

"Don't wait up. I'll be back later," he tells her and clasps her shoulder gently.

"No, you won't," Iris says and smiles as Ellie joins them. Iris kisses Alec on the cheek and then Ellie.

"Take care of that idiot, will you?"

Ellie laughs but she takes Alec by the hand, and drags him out into the sunlight. Iris watches them walk back to Ellie's car hand in hand, and she knows Alec isn't coming back. She goes back to the empty kitchen and she cries; because for the first time in almost three years, she knows that thanks to Ellie her son is going to be alright.

A/N: Hope you liked it!