Chapter Text
She sat, contentedly watching Jack finish both of his eggs and two pieces of toast with gusto. When she offered him her second egg, insisting that she was full after just one, he accepted it with a crooked smile, tucking into it without pause.
“Mr. Butler’s soft eggs are the picture of perfection,” he declared, collecting the now-empty dishes neatly into a stack. “I need to learn his secret so I can recreate it when I’m forced to start feeding myself again.” He chuckled lightly.
Phryne smiled warmly, certain that Jack hadn’t meant to allude to anything regarding their relationship with his statement, but it struck a chord of slight panic in her chest. Jack would leave Wardlow once Mac declared him fit to return to work, thus ending his quarantine in her home. She found that she quite enjoyed having him there, though to be fair, she’d been sleeping through most of his stay. Even so, she was loath to think about him leaving, afraid that once he went home and was left to his own devices, he would ruminate and brood over their late night confessions, focus too intently on their differences and quite possibly get cold feet and change his mind. No…. She needed to nip that possibility in the bud, immediately.
“Jack,” she leaned towards the small table, placing her cup back on its saucer. “You know you’re always welcome to dine here, no matter the time of day.”
Jack sensed the mood in the room grow more serious, as he met her eyes. “You have always been generous, Phryne, in your invitations to me. I wouldn’t dare impose upon your staff more frequently than I already do.”
“It’s not an imposition, Jack.” She saw the doubt forming in his eyes and she folded her hands. “Do you think…” Her gaze dropped to her own intertwined fingers. “Is there anything more we need to discuss regarding our conversation last night?”
Jack eyed Phryne for a moment, trying to determine if she was already regretting the confession she made in the dark hours of morning. He worried that maybe she was realizing how he really could become an imposition now that he’d drawn her attention to the possibility. He never could have predicted her action of coming to him in the middle of the night, nor would he have expected the ensuing conversation and revelations that happened thereafter.
When he first woke with the earliest rays of sunshine peeking through the parted curtains, his sleep-addled brain told him he’d dreamt up the entire sequence of events. But then, he turned his head and found her sleeping on his shoulder, snuggled close against his side, while her fingers held tightly to his pajama top. He knew for sure, in that instant, that it had all been very real, and very enlightening, even if it was all still somewhat unsettling. They had confessed their true feelings for each other… and now she wanted to discuss it further… in the daylight, where logic and reason reigned supreme… Suddenly, Jack Robinson felt frozen in place. He had half-convinced himself that the titled Lady would realize her mistake once she’d recovered from the worst of her fever, but he didn’t expect it to be only a couple hours after it first happened.
“Do you believe me when I tell you that Mr. Butler already shops at the market with your dining preferences in mind…? Or that Dot bakes extra sweets whenever she knows you’re expected to stop ‘round?”
“You, uhh,” he cleared his throat, setting his cup back on its saucer. “You have mentioned those facts in the past, but…” he shrugged, unsure what to say.
“But you thought I was just saying those things to make you feel better?”
“Well, it’s not that I didn’t believe you… it’s just… Well, it’s been a long time since anyone,” he shrugged again, “made any sort of special arrangements with me in mind..”
“Well,” she smiled a radiant, if somewhat playful smile, “I guess you’d better get used to the idea of special treatments, Jack.”
~MFMM~
“Unbelievable… . Absolutely unbelievable.”
Mac burst into Phryne’s room without warning, shortly after three in the afternoon. She stalked over to the vanity table and plunked her medicine bag down before turning to face them with her hands fisted on her hips. With a raised eyebrow, she glared at Phryne, “I shouldn’t be so surprised to hear about recklessness from you,” her attention swiveled to Jack. “But you! I expect better from you, Inspector!”
Phryne was propped up against a nest of pillows and Jack was at her bedside, sitting in his chair as they talked through some of the cold cases that Jack had brought with him.
Mac surveyed the scene and practically scoffed - the pair had the nerve to look surprised, wide-eyed and, dare-she-say-it… Angelic?
“You’re not fooling me with your false innocence - neither of you!”
“Mac,” Phryne shifted, smoothing her blanket across her lap. “What are you-”
“No!” She raised her index finger. “Don’t even try to deny it. Jane already lagged.”
“Lagged?” It was Jack’s turn to shift uncomfortably in his chair. “Jane lagged about what, exactly?”
“Oh, you’re something else, Jack Robinson,” Mac started rifling through her medicine bag, pausing only long enough to point an accusatory finger at him before resuming her search. “I told you to stay away from Wardlow, but you came to see Phryne the minute you left my office, anyway,” she thrust a thermometer into Phryne’s mouth without preamble while still directing her lecture at Jack. “I told you that since you were hellbent to ignore my warnings, to limit your contact and let her rest… Could you manage that? Noooo, you parked yourself in that chair and read to Phryne for hours on end.” She grabbed Phryne’s wrist to feel for her pulse, multi-tasking while delivering a proper dressing-down to the DI. “I left strict instructions for Phryne to sleep, and even gave her medicine that should have lasted through the night, and yet, you let her crawl into bed with you, not only interrupting her recovery but also putting yourself at further risk of contracting this illness!” She dropped her patient’s wrist, her bedside manner long abandoned. “And to think, I was planning to give you the all-clear to go back to work tomorrow,” she wagged her finger in the air towards Jack, “but no, not now!”
“But-” Jack squared his shoulders and sat forward, ready to stand up, but before he knew what was happening, Mac was at his side, pushing him against the chair back and shoving her back-up thermometer into his mouth, effectively cutting off his ability to defend himself.
When Phryne saw the shock in his eyes, she removed her own thermometer and prepared to speak up. Before she could utter a syllable, however, Mac saw the movement from the corner of her eye and turned her angry glare at her friend.
“Put that back in! Under your tongue!” She pointed back at Phryne. “It’s like herding cats with you two!”
As if to prove her point, Jack then removed his thermometer and sighed. “Dr. MacMillan,” he tried to remain calm, but when her hard expression was re-fixed on him, he shrank back into his chair, feeling like a scolded schoolboy. “I’ll just,” he raised the thermometer half-heartedly and looked sideways at Phryne in resignation before meeting Mac’s eyes again, “put this back in… I know, under my tongue…”
“What were you two thinking?!” Mac shook her head, as if to clear a mental image she didn’t want. “No,” she raised her palm in their general direction, turning her back to them as she moved over to her bag, “don’t answer that. I don’t want to hear what you were thinking.”
Phryne rolled her eyes. “We were only-”
“I definitely don’t want to hear what you were doing!”
The partners huffed in unison as Mac angrily reclaimed the thermometer from Phryne and Jack checked his own temperature. He raised an eyebrow at the perfectly normal results and returned the tool to the doctor with a pointed look that wordlessly told her “I’m fine.”
Grunting in reluctant satisfaction at his apparent healthy reading, she stubbornly tilted her head at his self-assured expression. “You are not in the clear yet, Inspector, symptoms may take up to two days to develop and show themselves.” She turned to Phryne. “And although you are improving, that does not mean that you can resume your typically bad behavior! You could easily have a relapse at any moment. When I said you needed rest, I meant it. Your body needs rest in order to recover!”
Phryne folded her arms across her chest and pinned her friend with a firm glare. “Mac, if you would stop talking for a moment, I think we have a right to speak in our own defense.”
“Speak in your own defense!? You mean to tell me that you two think you can actually justify the blatant disregard of specific doctor’s orders surrounding your well-being in the midst of a particularly nasty strain of infection running rampant in Melbourne?” She rolled her eyes. “This should be good…” Mac shoved her hands into her pockets, waiting for the aforementioned defense to commence as the guilty parties swapped knowingly guilty expressions. When they both appeared dumbfounded and neither spoke, she sighed. “That’s what I thought.”
She continued to shuffle in her bag and extracted a bottle of medication. “I expect each of you to take two of these after supper tonight, and then one pill twice a day starting tomorrow.”
“Dr. MacMillan,” Jack finally stirred from his dumbfounded silence. “I think you’re being unfair in your judgement of what’s happened here.”
“I’m not being unfair at all, Inspector. Both you and Phryne have taken it upon yourselves to make up your own rules during this period of quarantine. If everyone acted as you two have, the whole of Melbourne would be struck down with this illness in a matter of days.”
“Mac,” Phryne sighed, understanding that her friend’s bluntness was coming from a place of poorly concealed concern. “What difference does it really make if Jack and I remain in the same room or in separate spaces? We are in the same home, already having been exposed to each other, eating the same meals, etcetera, etcetera…”
“Don’t ‘etcetera’ me, Phryne! I told him to stay away from Wardlow from the first day I examined you, but he didn’t. And he didn’t stay away the next day or the next… resulting in his quarantine. And when I arrived today, I’ve learned that this… partnership has progressed to sharing a bed?!”
“Jack,” Phryne softened her eyes and looked at her partner. “Will you please give Mac and me some privacy?”
Eager to escape the wrath of the angry doctor, he stood quickly. “Absolutely. I’ll be downstairs.”
Making his hasty retreat, he practically ran over Jane as she waited in the hallway, not even pretending to not be eavesdropping. She looked up at him without a vain of guilt and failed to stifle a giggle at his exasperated expression.
“I can’t believe you lagged, Jane!” He whispered loudly, escorting her away from the closed bedroom door.
“I didn’t mean to cause any trouble, Inspector, honest!” She was eager for him to believe her. “It just happened.” She shrugged as they walked down the front staircase. “Dr. Mac asked Dot if Miss Phryne slept well last night. And when Dot stuttered, not really knowing how to answer, I just sort of…. Let it slip…”
They reached the bottom landing and Jack raised an eyebrow. “What exactly slipped?”
“I just said that this morning, when I passed you in the hallway,l on the way to the lavatory, you looked like you hadn’t slept well, but you had said Miss Phryne appeared to have slept soundly after she found you last night… And then I told her about poor Dot thinking Miss Phryne had escaped to the roof from the bedroom window, and that Hugh, Bert and Cec were all prepared to launch a search party should one have been required…”
Jack had no clue what she was talking about, between Dot thinking Phryne escaped and the lads wanting to go searching, it was clear that a lot had happened in the early morning hours while they had remained upstairs. It was obvious, however, that Jane felt bad about revealing the not-so-secret-secret to Mac, and Jack couldn’t fault her for simply speaking the truth surrounding their early morning interaction. From the sounds of it, the evolution of their relationship wasn’t exactly a secret, anyway… Besides, it wasn’t as if the girl had made blasphemous assumptions or declarations about the goings-on that morning. When he saw the sincere concern perilously close to becoming tears, he placed his hand on her shoulder.
“It’s alright, Jane. I know you didn’t mean any harm… It is only a matter of time before everyone finds out, anyway.”
Her eyes grew large. “Do you mean, you and Miss Phryne are… together now? Like, you’ll be stepping out together, as a proper couple?”
Jack chuckled and motioned her into the parlor. “Well, there are logistics still to be worked out, but I do hope that you, and the rest of the household for that matter, harbor no doubts about my feelings for Miss Fisher.”
Jane’s smile grew impossibly wide. “I knew it!” She threw her arms around Jack’s waist and hugged him. “Would you like me to tell you how I knew?” She looked up, still hugging him.
“Enlighten me.” He smirked.
“Because you know Miss Phryne for who she is - you come here whether she is happy or sad, and even though you may not always agree with her, you never pass judgement. She told me so.”
Jack felt his ears grow warm as one corner of his lips curled upward. “She said that, did she?”
“Mm-hmm.” Jane pulled back and flopped onto the chaise lounge, her very informal actions making it crystal clear that she, too, was comfortable in Jack’s presence. “I have long suspected she had the same feelings for you, y’know…”
He chuckled at her youthful exuberance and unabashed declaration. “Well,” he selected his normal side chair and picked up a book from the end table, flipping to the marked page. “That is good information to have, Jane. However,” he raised an eyebrow and focused on his book as he addressed the young lady. “I’m sure Miss Fisher will appreciate your discretion regarding the matter until it has officially become common knowledge.”
Jane laughed as she buried her nose in her own book. “It’s already common knowledge here at Wardlow, Inspector.”
~MFMM~
“Mac,” Phryne’s attention turned to her friend as soon as Jack closed the bedroom door.“I think you are blowing things out of proportion.”
“You were supposed to be resting, sleeping, recovering Phryne! Instead, you are sleeping with your Inspector!? How am I blowing that out of proportion?”
“Sleeping, Mac. We were doing exactly that. Sleeping.”
The doctor tilted her head. “You expect me to believe that, Phryne? You think I will believe that you finally found yourself in Jack Robinson’s bed, in the bed of the man with whom you’ve been secretly in love, and you only slept?”
Feeling her defenses rise, Phryne’s back stiffened. “I never told you I was in love with Jack…”
“Oh, please Phryne, give me some credit. I may not see the world through your colorful lenses, but I can certainly see how you feel, even if you don’t want to admit it to yourself. At any rate, however, your body is not up for those types of calisthenics yet…”
“I’m telling you the truth, Mac. We slept together. It was still dark outside when I woke up… I had a nightmare… Dot was sleeping soundly on the chaise and I hated to wake her over a silly dream that I couldn’t even fully remember. Then, I recalled that Jack was in the next room.” She looked down at her bedspread, smoothing our invisible wrinkles. “I only planned to look in on him… I knew that if I saw him, I would feel better… Then I saw that little rebellious curl falling across his forehead and I wanted to brush it aside… the next thing I knew, he was awake and worrying about me. We sat there for a while, talking quietly… Then, we were laying down and he was chasing away the shadows with his quiet words… And then it was morning, and Mr. Butler was trying his best to be quiet while bringing in a tray of breakfast things.”
Mac listened without interrupting her friend. She watched as Phryne’s face became peaceful and thoughtful at the mention of Jack’s hair and the obvious comfort she’d gained from being with him.
“He told me some of his past,” Phryne said quietly, “and I told him some of mine…” She raised her pale gaze to find Mac watching her carefully. “I told him about that night… that last night with Rene.”
“Phryne, you’ve never told anyone about that…”
“I know. But I wanted him to know… so he would understand…”
“So he would understand what, Phryne?”
“That I don’t have a habit of making empty declarations…”
“Phryne, are you telling me that you told Jack Robinson how you feel?”
She nodded, holding her longtime friend’s eyes without hesitation. “Yes. I told him.”
Mac felt like she’d gotten to the end of a chapter in her favorite book, where the author had left her hanging. “And…? What did he say when you made this bold declaration?”
Phryne simply smiled, tilting her head playfully, and raised her eyes towards the ceiling in an impish refusal to say more.
~MFMM~
Mac soon found herself standing in the doorway of the parlor, looking in where Jane had dozed off on the lounge and Jack was reading peacefully. Her friend hadn’t betrayed her partner’s confidences surrounding their early morning confessions, but she’d made it perfectly clear that both of the detectives were on the same page with regards to their feelings. She nodded in acceptance when Mr. Butler poked his head out of the kitchen to see if she wanted a drink before joining them for an early supper. Taking the chair at Jack’s side, she placed her bag on the floor.
Jack finished the sentence he was reading and closed his book, placing it on the coffee table. He folded his hands across his lap and looked at her, hiding the giddiness he felt since Jane’s declaration.
“So,” Mac began, “I guess I owe you a partial apology, Jack.”
“Only a partial one?” He let his mouth curl into a smirk.
“I’m still upset with you for ignoring my initial warning…” she eyed him with a playful warning. “But, as long as Phryne continues to improve and you stay healthy, I guess all’s well that ends well…”
“Hmm, yes, well,” he chuckled. “I accept your partial apology… but I’m not going to say sorry for ignoring your orders to stay away… Not because I don’t respect your opinion, but because I can’t regret the end result of my mutiny.”
To that, Mac actually barked a laugh so loud that it woke Jane. She raised her glass in cheers to Jack and toasted his humorous rebuke. “I dare say that Phryne isn’t sorry, either, Inspector.”
He took a sip of his own refilled tumbler and winked at Jane. “I sure hope you’re right, Doctor.”
~MFMM~
The formal dining room had been arranged for dinner, but the settings were casual and the wireless in the corner of the room quietly played happy tunes. Phryne had decided that she was well enough to dine with her family as opposed to taking dinner in her bedroom.
As they made their way down the staircase, Jack’s arm serving as additional support on the opposite side of the banister, the Lady of the House hummed in anticipation when the combinations of scents reached her nose.
“Something smells delicious,” she announced, her eagerness was apparent as they stopped in the open doorway.
“Perfect timing, Miss Fisher, Inspector,” Mr. Butler nodded in greeting. “Dinner is ready to be served.” He motioned to the two remaining chairs available.
“Excellent, Mr. B,” Phryne took the chair closest to the archway. “I do hope you are planning to dine with us this evening.” She eyed her butler knowingly, raising her brows in a challenge for him to not decline.
“I wouldn’t want to intrude, Miss,” he said quietly, not wanting to go down without the appearance of a fight. “It’s not really my place to dine with you… Besides, wouldn’t I be of more use to you and the Inspector in my official capacity?”
“Poppycock,” she rolled her eyes, knowing exactly what he was up to, her playful butler. “You know very well that it is perfectly within your rights to eat with us! How often have I invited you to share a meal and you always find an excuse not to.” She spread her napkin across her lap, winked at Jack, and spoke to her ever-capable houseman again. “No, I won’t accept ‘No’ for an answer tonight, so you’d better set yourself a place.”
Jane and Dot giggled at the antics of their Miss Phryne and Mr. Butler. Dot hurried to gather a service setting for Mr. Butler, placing him opposite herself.
“Thank you, Dorothy,” the older man smiled as he continued filling everyone’s plate from the family style serving bowls.
Once everyone was seated behind dishes overflowing with steaming, aromatic foods, Phryne cleared her throat and gathered everyone’s attention.
“I… well, we,” she smirked at Jack and quickly turned back to her family. “We have something to say. As you may or may not have realized, things have been changing between the Inspector and myself of late; especially during the past few days, though there is no doubt the changes have been coming for many months now. It’s only fair, however, to share the news with you all, as we are all family, no matter how unconventional it may be.” Her eyes flitted around the table and finally settled on Jack’s again, before she re-addressed the table.
“Jack and I have talked long into the wee hours of morning on more than one occasion. We have stood side by side while facing down criminals, and we’ve even saved each other’s lives once or twice. Throughout the course of our partnership, we’ve both experienced a shift in our feelings, and we have come to the realization of just how well we collaborate, and how much better we are together than we are apart.”
She reached out and was instantly met by Jack’s hand engulfing hers. “Jack and I are … expanding beyond that of a professional partnership and we are entering into a romantic, monogamous relationship. And while it may not be much of a surprise to most of you, based, not solely I might add, on your constant, not-at-all-subtle hints,” her eyes fell on Mac, “we felt it was important to let you all know right away.” Phryne smiled softly. “I never expected, when I came back to Melbourne all those many months ago, that I would not only find myself surrounded by the type of family I’d always longed for, but that I’d also have my life altered so dramatically by meeting a stoic, but charming Senior Detective Inspector on my first day back… but here we are…”
The smiles around the table grew brighter as she spoke, everyone happy to see their Miss Phryne both recovering from her fever and glowing with sincere adoration when she looked at the inspector. Never one to allow any situation to become overly sappy, Mac raised her glass and broke the silence that followed Phryne’s announcement.
“Well, I think I can speak for all of us when I say, it’s about bloody time!”