Work Text:
IMPRINT: (of a young animal) to come to recognise (another animal, person, or thing) as an object of habitual trust.
It was becoming a bit of a habit.
She’s not waiting for him, of course, she’s reading in her parlour, but she lifts her head reflexively at the gleam of the headlights. His polite professional rap at her door. The deep rumble of his voice in hall.
Oh, that must be Jack.
Her body was beginning to react to the familiar sounds in advance of a conscious thought—an upwelling of animal happiness, a warm little spot blooming up in her chest. A pleasurable surge of the blood elsewhere, and that was always nice too, even as it was increasingly clear that that aspect would be a pure hypothetical.
The Inspector to see you, Miss—are you in?
Of course, Mr. Butler.
She was always in to the Inspector. She didn’t fancy going out, as it happened, on evenings they had wrapped up a case. On evenings when they had wrapped up a case, she rather fancied staying in, lipstick freshly applied, wearing something soft, curled up on one side of the chaise with an inviting spot left open on the other side.
To begin with he stands at the door, proper and a little stiff, half-way, like a cat undecided on in or out. D.I. Robinson, call-me-Jack, just has some witness statements to sign, Miss Fisher, a small detail to clear up.
She clears up the detail. He takes a step in. She smiles, warm, inviting, and asks him some questions in return (about the case, always about the case to start with). He takes a few more steps in. And was Miss Williams all right after all the excitement? Collins was asking after her, or at least trying not to seem to ask after her. His first faint trace of a smile of the evening, and they share a fond, conspiratorial look. Young people and their awkward romances!
Do you have time for a drink, Inspector?
Oh, thank you. Perhaps just the one…
His smile comes through clearer now, his ironic, amused one, with a touch of self-mockery in the lowered eyes.
Tonight he’s not standing up by the mantel, still tense and alert from the job. Tonight, he sinks into the place she made for him on the chaise, closing his eyes. He looks tired. When she looks at him more closely, he looks very tired, dark patches under the eyes and shoulders sagging. This case had been complex, gruelling, and she’s sure he has hardly slept in days. She’s wound-up herself, but now that Jack is here she can relax.
They go over the case in more detail. He’s curious about her opinion of this, when did she first start to suspect that? This is lovely, her favourite part, to unfold her thinking to him, to hear how it all had looked from his perspective, both of them tracing back over the pattern until the whole thing is spread out before them, intricate and beautiful. He starts to unfurl, his long body tilting back against the chaise. He waxes a little philosophical. She laughs, the best laugh she’s had in days, and her legs stretch out, brushing her bare feet against his thigh.
The telephone in the hall shrills.
Mr. Butler’s face is all apology. “I beg your pardon, Miss, but your aunt is on the line. She says it is urgent.”
Dammit. She’s surprised at how annoyed she is, at the jolt of possessive anger that had briefly flashed over her. These rare times with Jack were fragile, and hers. She regains her balance, smiles, rolls her eyes.
“My Aunt Prudence has been making me jump since I was a child.”
He smiles too, his weariness making him unusually soft and open. “I’m sure you’ve given her some grey hairs yourself, Miss Fisher.”
Her bare feet are cold on the tiles of the hall, and Aunt Prudence’s voice crackles over the tinny line. Charity dinner plans, engravings for invitations, of course not urgent, of course requiring a torrent of irrelevant detail. Phryne keeps her voice low. She doesn’t want Jack spooked, suddenly remembering that he was a policeman, and she was Society, and it is getting late. She doesn’t want him to make his show of looking at his watch, to fold himself back neatly away into himself, to melt away from her into the night, not so soon.
Finally she manages to extract herself and hangs up the telephone with a click and a sigh.
“Jack, now where were we—”
He is by nature normally so still and quiet that it takes her a moment to realise he’s asleep. His angle has tilted a few degrees to one side, his head sunk onto his breast. His big hands lie curled loose and still in his lap.
She walks up quietly and resumes her place next to him.
She has seen him asleep before, once, when he had seized a chance for a kip like an old solider, while Mac’s chemicals took their slow time to catalyse with each other. But he had pulled his hat down over his face, then, and furthermore she’d be damned if she’d encourage the speculations of Mac, shooting her sarcastic glances over her instruments.
She can take her time and look at him now.
When she had first seen him, a study in grey on grey, she had thought he looked like a policeman. He still looks like a policeman, which, she thinks fondly, is just like Jack’s honest soul.
She had never been in the habit of trusting policemen. Her father had instilled in her from infancy that policemen were to be lied to, that if she trusted policemen they would take him away, or take her away. By experience she had expanded this rule to not trust men in general, and her father in particular.
She had worked both with and against many police detectives, when she had been an agent. One expected, at best, an interesting cynic; more generally, one got a tough, tired man in a bad suit, suspicion ingrained into a hard face. He could profess to play that part, D.I. Robinson, but he couldn’t fool her.
Looking at Jack now, his facade lowered, all the suffering of war and crime etched on his face, she wonders how he has preserved that sensitive, honest mouth, those perceptive curious eyes. It took work—how she knew it took work!—not to let oneself become deadened to a hard world that seemed filled with tragedy and cruelty, to allow onself to keep open, to keep reacting, to keep feeling.
And with is head tilted just so in the half-light, she had to say he was quite ridiculously beautiful...
He would be embarrassed, if she woke him, appalled at his bad manners, (as if Jack would ever be anything but a perfect gentleman!). Much as she relished a flustered Inspector, tonight he seemed so worn, she wanted only soothing things for him. She would spare his blushes and have Mr. Butler wake him and send him home.
She was very tired too. It felt terribly wrong to send him away. On the late hour and the whiskey her thoughts muddle. Jack was home. He ought to be here, always, with her. She ought to take him up to bed, their bed, curl up under the covers naked where she fit against his warm skin, and they could sleep.
Good Lord! She shook herself. Where had that come from? She must be more tired than she thought. She stands up, abrupt but stealthy, and backs away from him. She’ll indulge in one last long look though.
She can’t help it. She ducks down to him swiftly, softly, then sweeps out before she dwells too much on it.
Jack wakes up with a jerk, disoriented. Someone is talking to him gently. He’s somewhere warm, that smells of Phryne, and his pounding heart subsides.
Mr. Butler is smiling down on him.
“I beg your pardon, Inspector, but Miss Fisher wishes to let you know that she must do a little business for her aunt, and would you mind terribly showing yourself out tonight? Miss Fisher is so very sorry, she knows you are such a good friend you won’t stand on ceremony.”
Jack isn’t fooled, but he’s grateful for her tact and kindness. He makes his apologies, gathers his hat, slips out, sheepish, with Mr. Butler still smiling after him.
The route from her place to his is becoming so familiar he is scarcely conscious of the drive home, and he collapses into bed, asleep in a minute.
It’s not until he’s going through his routine in the morning that he looks in the mirror, and stops. He washes the mark off carefully, but all day he will close his eyes for a moment, and feel the imprint of her lips pressing on his forehead.