Work Text:
Phryne Fisher has never been the sort of person one can tell what to do.
It’s why, as a child, she had come home to more scoldings, ear-boxings – and occasionally even hidings – than any other little girl she knew. Any other boy, even. It’s why, as an adult, she’s faced down certain death on more occasions than you could shake a stick at and why, frankly, she’s always managed to escape it.
She doesn’t, in any way shape or form, believe in the idea of destiny, fate, or any of that nonsense.
The only person who decides the details of Phryne’s life is Phryne, this is what makes it so gloriously unpredictable and this – well this is why, when a fortune teller has the audacity to try and tell her how her life will turn out – she laughs.
No one can know that, she decides, and even if they could – it sounds like they have her mightily confused with someone else.
After all, she’s always bloody hated croquet.
*
“I’m not doing it.”
Jack rolls his eyes and returns to his cufflinks. “You’ve been saying that all week.”
“Because I’m not doing it,” Phryne repeats, folding her arms and staring him down.
“Fine.” Jack shrugs. “Then I’ll let you explain to your Aunt Prudence why you’re not there.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” she huffs, unmoving. “I’ve let her down plenty of times in the past, I can do it again.”
Jack finishes with his cuffs and turns to her, one eyebrow raised. “Who are you trying to insult here?”
Phryne stares him down for a moment, thoroughly unimpressed, jaw clenching.
“I’m not going, Jack, I told you. I bloody hate croquet.”
Jack gives her a sympathetic smile and kisses her on the cheek. He knows she does, and he knows that is one of the many reasons she isn’t looking forward to her Aunt Prudence’s Charity Croquet Tournament. He also knows that Phryne loves her Aunt dearly, just as she had loved her cousin Arthur, and that there is nothing she would want to do more than support fundraising in his memory, if only the croquet weren’t involved.
This is why he knows that for all the bluster, she will be going – even if she decides to be fashionably late to prove how much she disapproves of having to go. This is why, as she continues to grumble, Jack just does his tie and then settles himself in a chair with a book.
They will be going, eventually, because she has already decided that – she’ll just go on her terms, in her own time. She’ll decide the details.
*
“Good God, this is worse than I imagined.”
“Patience, darling.”
Phryne glares. “Patience for what? That old man to die of boredom at the next hoop?”
Jack shakes his head, smirking. “Only you could hate a game this much and still be winning at it.”
She glances down at the shot she’s just made, and then looks back up to raise a challenging eyebrow in his direction. “I said I hate it, Jack, not that I’m not good at it. Never forget I got sent to a school for young ladies.”
“How could I, my dear, when you are the epitome of ladylike good breeding. Tell me, is that a pistol in your garter, or are you just pleased to see me?”
She takes a step into his space, expression turning wicked. “I’m always pleased to see you, Jack,” she murmurs, fluttering her eyelashes at him. “But you know I never leave home without it.”
Jack stares her down, apparently unmoved by her closeness – though there is a tell-tale hitch in his breath that she doesn’t miss. She never misses it. “And what, pray tell, do you think you’ll need a pistol for at a Charity Croquet Tournament, hmm?”
She shrugs and steps away from him again with a teasing grin. “Surprise assassination attempt?”
“On your Aunt Prudence?”
“She’s a very influential woman, Jack,” she replies, tone utterly serious save for the mocking rise in its pitch. “Not a lot of women have the power to persuade this many people that croquet isn’t so heinously dull they should spend their free time playing it. And paying to play it, at that. That’s a power mortal organisers like me can only aspire to.”
“Phryne,” Jack says, deadpan, regarding her carefully as he leans on his mallet. “If you ever express a desire to start organising croquet tournaments I will either a, send you straight to Mac to assess for head injury, or b, assume you have snapped and decided you want to start a new career in torture.”
She blinks at him, all flirtation and false innocence, painting on a pout. “But Jack, are you saying you don’t want me to spend my free time organising amateur sporting events for the elderly? What about my tea parties?” She gasps in fake horror. “Oh, what about my plans to start a bi-weekly sewing club?”
He stares her down with an expression that says he is thoroughly unmoved, but the glint in his eyes that's always there when she teases twinkles in the mid-afternoon sun. She holds the pout for a second longer, then allows it to break back into a smile, and steps forward again to kiss him. His free hand comes immediately to the small of her back, a gentle weight as he smiles against her lips.
“You’re incorrigible, did you know that?”
“It’s why you love me.”
“Mhmm.”
A throat clears from behind them, and they jump slightly apart – though Jack’s hand doesn’t leave her back.
“Were you done at this hoop?” A rather prim looking woman – who must be at least seventy and whose mallet is clasped in her fist like an eagle’s talon clasping prey – stares at them over the glasses on the end of her nose, expression thoroughly unimpressed.
“Oh, I’m quite sure they are, Audrey,” another voice says, and Phryne presses her lips together to suppress the laugh that tries to escape as her Aunt shoots them a glare from behind the old woman’s shoulder. “I must apologise for my niece’s lack of haste on the ball.”
She tenses, and she feels Jack tense beside her – the urge to laugh suddenly increased tenfold.
“I’m terribly sorry, Aunt Prudence,” she manages to choke out, biting her tongue once the words have escaped to stop the laugh following after.
“We’ll move along,” Jack adds soberly, his other hand going to Phryne’s elbow and hurrying her across the grass before the damn breaks.
Wisely, he leads them away from the lawn and around towards the pool house, discarding their mallets up against a bush in the process. Once they’re there, she breaks, descending into peals of laughter that shake her so hard she’s wiping away tears.
Jack, like in so many things, joins her.
“Oh,” she sighs, straightening up again and trying to choke down the chuckling aftershocks. “Aunt Prudence is going to kill me.”
“Good thing you brought the gun then,” Jack adds, and she snorts.
Phryne sighs, shaking her head in amusement. “Gosh could you imagine how much more angry she’d be if people didn’t think we were married?”
Jack smirks. “You’d definitely need the gun.”
She wipes the remains of her amusement away from her cheeks, then reaches for his hand, toying with the band that sits on his left ring finger for a moment or two.
“Do you ever mind that it’s not real?” she asks, all joking suddenly gone as she looks back at him.
A small furrow appears between his eyebrows, and he looks down at where her fingers trace the line of the ring that’s been there for almost a year now. “It is real,” he replies simply. “In that you gave it to me because you love me, and you wanted us to be free.”
She tilts her head, considering.
“It’s not a wedding ring, Phryne, but a wedding ring doesn’t always mean what people want it to, anyway. I should know. It might not represent marriage but that doesn’t mean I can’t treasure it for all the things it does represent – like the fact you wanted me enough to wear your own.”
“Want,” she corrects, without hesitation, and he smiles.
“The fact you want me enough to wear your own.”
Her gaze flickers down to the ring on her own finger, hand stilling where it has been drawing circles around his. It’s beautiful, specially made, just like his. If they were going to commit to the facade, she had decided, then they were going to commit to it properly.
“I like this much better,” she muses, and he wraps his fingers around hers, pulling her close.
“As do I.”
Jack leans in and she smiles, sighing in anticipation of his lips against hers.
Then the sound of raised voices reaches them from over the bushes, and they both turn confused faces in the direction from which they’d escaped.
“Assassins?” Phryne asks him with a delighted grin.
“You seem far too excited by that prospect,” Jack shoots back, and she shrugs, slipping her fingers through his and pulling him back towards the lawn.
As they approach, Jane almost bumps into them, face flustered and expression one of supreme irritation.
“Oh, there you are!” she exclaims in a huff. “Could you discipline your children please, they’re making a scene.”
Phryne blinks, mouth falling open as she turns from her daughter to the standoff happening six feet behind her.
“I’m black, you’re blue!” Bert insists, and Cec lets out an angry groan.
“No, I’m black, I’ve been playing black this whole time ya moron, now we’ve lost our turn.”
“It really doesn’t matter, boys,” Dot pitches in – evidently trying to sound placating but sounding more exasperated instead.
“No, we’re happy for you to take the shot again,” Hugh adds with a smile, and the two of them round on him.
“Are you saying we don’t know how to play?” Bert asks.
Hugh opens his mouth, blinks, then shuts it. “I…”
“Bert’s not stupid, Hugh, he knows the rules,” Cec chips in, turning his accusing stare to Hugh.
“He wasn’t saying that he didn’t!” Dot exclaims.
“Yeah, it’s only bloody croquet,” Bert argues, ignoring this. “It’s not sophisticated cop work, I’m sure my red ragger brain can handle it.”
“What,” Jack breathes, staring at the unfolding scene, fingers still around Phryne’s, “on God’s green Earth, is happening?”
“The boys have been on Aunt Prudence’s special Champagne Punch,” Jane supplies, accusation in her tone as she turns to Phryne. “I told you not to let them near it after what happened at the Charity Bridge Night!”
Phryne turns scandalised eyes on her – looking from her daughter to the rapidly descending situation in front of them and back again. “Oh, so this is my fault, is it?”
“You should know better than to let Bert near alcohol at Aunt Prudence’s events! You two already made enough of a scene with all your – ” she waves a hand disgustedly in their direction, “ – whatever earlier. I don’t understand how I’m the only one here acting like a mature adult. Poor Aunt P’s only trying to do a nice thing for Arthur and you’re all ruining it!”
With this, she storms of, mallet grasped angrily in her hand, and Phryne stands there speechless.
Jack, ever the wit, remains silent for a moment and then adds, “Sixteen’s proving an excellent look on her, wouldn’t you say?”
Phryne shoots him a sidelong death glare, then turns her attention back to the squabble before them.
She watches – somewhere between horror and deep, deep amusement that this is how the day has gone – as what had been a verbal scrap starts turning physical and Bert and Cec (turned on each other, once more, because when has logic ever been present in their little contretemps) begin poking at each other with their mallets, Hugh attempting to intervene, and Dot watching on in horror.
“Phryne,” Jack pipes up from beside her – and there’s something odd in his voice. She turns to look at him, frowning at the expression on his face as he watches the scene before him. It’s a strange mix of mirth and awe.
“What?”
“Do you remember that story you told me?” He turns to look at her. “About the fortune teller?”
Her frown only deepens, confused, for a moment – until she remembers.
Horror descends on her like a wave.
“No,” she gasps, disbelieving. Her gaze travels to the ring on the finger twined between Jacks, to the lawn-ful of croquet players slowly stopping their games to watch the unfolding drama on the grass, to her extended family – quarrelling like children in front of her. “No.”
Jack laughs, deep and warm and hearty.
“No, Jack!” she insists, a whine in her voice which only makes him laugh harder. “This is not that! She was not right – stop laughing!”
Jack releases her hand to clutch at his own side.
“It’s not true, Jack!” she insists – though she has to admit the similarities are disturbing. The details might be a little different, but the idea is quite strikingly the same.
She looks back at the argument in front of her and shakes her head in wonder. Fate, it seems – or the fortune teller – has played her.
Jack manages to reign in his laughter enough to wrap an arm around her shoulders and pull her into his side, dropping a kiss to her hair. “Don’t be too disheartened, I’d say you still got the last laugh.”
She turns in his hold to look up at him, raising an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Well,” he shrugs, “you still decided the details, didn’t you?”
She inclines her head, considering. He’s right, of course. For all that the ridiculous fortune, in this moment, appears right – it also couldn’t be more wrong. She might have a ring on her finger, but she is very happily not married. The infant-like squabbling in front of her is not from any children she has had to have the displeasure of birthing or raising.
And she still bloody hates croquet.
“I suppose I sort of made it my own,” she admits, allowing the realisation to bring a smile to her face.
“Much better that way,” Jack adds, and she huffs out a laugh.
“Hello!” A voice interrupts their musing, and the two of them turn to where Jane has returned, croquet mallet still clutched angrily in her fist. “Are you two going to do anything about this?” She waves a hand at where Bert and Cec have raised their mallets like fencing foils and are now squaring each other down with narrowed eyes.
Phryne shrugs, smirking. “I think you can handle it, Jane – you are the mature one, after all.”
Jane lets out a little scream of annoyance and marches off towards the cabbies, red faced.
Jack gives Phryne a questioning look and she lets her expression turn innocent.
“Well that’s what they say, isn’t it? Let the children handle it themselves.”
He rolls his eyes fondly and pulls her back into him, turning to watch with an amused chuckle as Jane starts to confiscate croquet equipment.
“She did get that part totally wrong,” Jack remarks, and Phryne hums in question. “You don’t have four children.”
Phryne regards the scene before her; Jane handing off mallets to Dot, who is staring the rest of them down with disapproval, Hugh sheepishly hanging by Dottie’s side and accepting the collection of equipment she hands in turn to him. Bert and Cec, standing with shamed expressions as Jane dresses them down – her smaller stature and the bow in her hair nowhere near enough to remove the sisterly authority she has adopted over them in this moment.
It is all completely surreal, but Phryne doesn’t think she’d have it any other way. If the fortune had to come true, she’s pleased these are her chosen details.
“No,” she agrees with a huff and a little disbelieving smile. “We have five – but then I chose the details, and I chose every one of them.”
“And me?” Jack asks with a teasing nudge.
“I chose you, too.”
“So, shall we start playing more croquet then, darling?”
She pulls away to look up at him, just so he can see the complete lack of amusement in her glare.
“I am never playing croquet again.”
“Alright,” he smirks, gaze drifting over her shoulder. “Then I’ll let you explain that to your Aunt Prudence.”
She closes her eyes and groans at the shout of her name from behind her, looking up at Jack with a pleading expression, and he reaches down to take Phryne’s hand – stepping beside her to face down her approaching aunt. He leans in just far enough to whisper in her ear, breath warm against her skin, and she smiles at the feel of him.
She really is quite happy with her details.
“Thank goodness you brought the gun.”