Work Text:
Phryne enjoyed sleeping. Vividly remembering a childhood of scratchy sheets and lumpy beds, she relished in the comforts of her soft, warm bed with a comfortable mattress to sprawl on, copious soft pillows to burrow into and crisp silk sheets to caress her skin. She especially enjoyed sleeping if she had been in the interview room at City South Police Station until three in the morning, and if the previous night had been cut short by nocturnal investigating as well (which, yes, all right, had skirted the edges of legality).
What Phryne did not enjoy was being woken up after roughly five hours of sleep by the noise of someone walking up the stairs, coming into the bedroom and starting to undress, trying to move quietly, but being too tired to do so. A shoe hit the floor with a thump. A knee collided with a side table, drawing a muffled curse from the knee's owner.
Phryne opened her eyes.
“Do you mean to tell me,” she said into her pillow, “that you were at the station until now?”
The furtive shuffling noises of Jack trying to undress without waking her stopped.
“I was. I'm sorry I woke you.”
“No matter,” she said, turning over to her back. When she had left the station, the case had been neatly cracked, with just a few loose administrative ends left to tie up. Her curiosity was rapidly winning out over her disgruntlement at having her sleep disturbed. “What on earth happened? I thought you had the man pinned.”
In what daylight the closed curtains let into the room, she observed that Jack had managed to undress as far as shoes and suit jacket. She could also see that he looked dishevelled and thoroughly annoyed. He huffed and went on unbuttoning his waistcoat.
“We did. Signed confession and everything. But all of a sudden he remembered that he was a citizen of a small European country and in possession of diplomatic immunity and that we couldn't arrest him after all. Turns out,” he was interrupted by a yawn that left his eyes watering, “turns out he was not, in fact, a diplomat, but we could only keep him in after a long and tedious telephone call to his embassy and dealing with some equally tedious lawyers. And the paperwork.”
He actually shuddered.
“From now on, I'm going to inquire about my suspects' nationalities before I arrest them. Save me a lot of trouble.”
He frowned at his fingers, clumsy with fatigue, which were trying and failing to undo his cufflinks.
“Well,” said Phryne, sitting up and patting the bed next to her, “wouldn't you have to arrest them anyway?”
He grunted in answer, but came to sit next to her and let her help him. Being in contact with a bed seemed to diminish his self-control, because instead of getting up to put away the cufflinks, he gave another jaw-cracking yawn and flopped face-first into the pillows. She lay back down and turned to face him.
“Which country was it?”
“Hmmm?”
“The murderer, Jack,” she said patiently, prodding him in the ribs with a forefinger, “which country did he claim citizenship of?”
“Oh.” He turned his face towards her, eyes still closed. “Can't remember. Belgium or some such. Why?”
“Just trying to gauge the likelihood of this causing a diplomatic incident.”
Jack sighed with the satisfaction of a man who well and truly Does Not Care.
“Let the day shift deal with it.”
She slid her hand underneath his remaining layers of clothing, feeling him shiver when her palm touched the bare skin at the small of his back.
“Oh, but a policeman's work is never done, Inspector. Don't you plan to go back to work after breakfast?”
Jack opened his eyes to glare at her.
“I do not,” he informed her. “I intend to sleep for a good ten or twelve hours, eat my weight in steak and kidney pie and possibly venture as far as downstairs for a drink and a game of draughts.”
“Sounds delightful. Steak and kidney pie?”
A slow smile spread across his tired face.
“Mr. Butler confided his dinner plans to me.”
She returned the smile and extracted her hand from his shirt.
“You'd better get to bed. If you want to be awake for dinner, that is.”
“I am in bed.”
“So you are. How about a bath first?”
“I'd love one. Not sure I can stay awake long enough not to drown in the tub, though.”
This close, Jack smelled like his office – ink, paper files and very bad tea – with undertones of dried sweat, which wasn't altogether unpleasant, but not the smell Phryne would have chosen to cling to her bedsheets. She nuzzled into his neck and gave it an exaggerated sniff. The corners of his mouth curled into a smirk.
“All right then. You've made your point.”
With the air of someone making a sacrifice at great personal cost, Jack dragged himself off the bed and into the bathroom. Phryne got up as well, but only long enough to pull back the curtains and call downstairs to arrange for Mr. Butler to bring up some breakfast. Having made all the necessary arrangements, she got back into bed and closed her eyes, listening to the running water of Jack's shower next door. She must have dozed off, because when she opened her eyes again there was a well-stacked breakfast trolley next to the bed and a naked Jack on the other side of the room, towelling his wet hair with one hand and rummaging through a drawer with the other.
The sight of him casually standing naked in her bedroom made her smile, and she got up onto both elbows for a better look. Phryne never tired of watching him, the way the muscles moved under the smooth skin of his back, the sunlight striking bright sparks in his hair, the slight tilt of his head as he caught sight of his face in the mirror, undoubtedly not terribly pleased with what he was seeing, running on no sleep and hardly any food.
He had been bashed about a bit, her inspector: with his back turned to her, she could see part of the untidy pale scar on his thigh, souvenir of a trench in France. His left shoulder was an interesting shade of purple, result of being shoved into a very solid wooden cabinet during the arrest of the apparently-Belgian would-be diplomat last night. She had been there when it happened, but seeing the angry bruise now, she surprised herself with the force of her fury at the man who had caused it. Jack Robinson wasn't in need of her protection, she told herself reasonably. He had managed fine to fend for himself before she had known him. That didn't mean she didn't want to cause whoever hurt him a great deal of bodily harm.
Jack discarded the wet towel and turned around, holding his chosen pair of dark blue pyjamas and looking neither bashful nor surprised to find her looking at him.
He smiled.
“Has no one ever told you that it's rude to stare at a naked man?”
“Even at one as finely made as yourself?”
She was gratified to see a delicate pink flush rise on his face. If being naked in front of her didn't put him off his stride any more, at least her compliments still made him blush.
“The flattery,” he muttered and, regrettably, put on the pyjamas before getting into bed beside her. Phryne sat up, got situated with her breakfast and poured herself a cup of coffee.
“It's not flattery if it's true.”
He gave a small huff of amusement, but was clearly disinclined to discuss semantics with her when there was a perfectly good breakfast to tuck into.
They ate in companionable silence for a while, Jack shovelling toast and scrambled egg into his mouth with single-minded determination, which was how Phryne liked it. She was willing to make certain exceptions, but really she couldn't abide loquacious people in the morning before her second cup of coffee. Thankfully, Jack was like her and tended to wake up slowly and grumpily.
She had reached the adequate level of caffeination when Jack replaced his empty breakfast tray on the trolley and sank back into the pillows with a sigh of deep contentment. Phryne, nibbling on her last piece of toast with orange marmalade, looked at him and giggled.
“The criminal element of Melbourne would be having a field day if they could see you like this.”
One corner of his mouth twitched up.
“I don't care. Unless they invade this house and wake me up.”
Phryne finished her toast, put away her own tray and snuggled against his side. Jack's arm came up behind her to settle around her shoulders. He was surprisingly comfortable, she thought, for a man without a spare ounce on him. Must be all that gardening and chasing after murder suspects. After all he had been enjoying Mr. Butler's excellent cooking for quite a while now.
She glanced upwards at his peaceful, relaxed face, then closed her eyes and laid her cheek against his chest.
“Don't worry,” she told him. “I'll look out for you.”
His breathing had become deep and even. Only the tap of his finger against her shoulder indicated that he had heard her.