Chapter Text
Hands on his hips, surveying his kingdom, Jack Mooney looked at the stove in exasperation. Steam was spiralling up from the pans crowding every part of the stove, and he ran a hand through his already ruffled hair. Behind him, there was the unmistakable sound of a phone buzzing followed by a small squeak of excitement, and Jack couldn’t help but smile as he turned around. It was the unmistakable sound of his daughter getting a text from her girlfriend.
“She says she just got on the tube, so she’ll be with us in about half an hour!” Siobhan came into the kitchen with a bounce in her step that had been almost permanent for the last six months.
“Good! Good… Good. Good.” Jack gave his daughter a smile and a small wave, but turned back to the stove with deep distrust in his eyes. “Now I think I have everything under control here-“
“- And he hasn’t even ruined his shirt yet,” Anna commented from the doorway between the kitchen and the hall. “Which is a miracle, considering the mess Mooney’s Magic Meatballs have made of the rest of the kitchen.”
Jack opened his mouth to protest, but it was drowned out by Siobhan’s laughter. He relented, cracking a lop-sided grin that was almost a perfect match for his daughter’s. “Alright, alright, fair enough you two. I should have known you’d be ganging up on me,” he picked up a wooden spoon and gave the bubbling pot of sauce a stir, before wagging it in the direction of his daughter, “I just hope this girlfriend of yours will take my side. Of course, I don’t know that, I don’t know anything about the girl!”
Siobhan rolled her eyes fondly, and hopped up onto the counter next to the sink. Cutting off the speech she’d heard about a hundred times before, she shrugged with a winning smile. “Well after tonight you’ll know plenty about her, won’t you Dad?”
“You could at least tell us her name!” Jack pleaded, splattering yet more sauce across the work surface as he did.
“That’ll ruin the surprise Dad!” Siobhan gave him an infuriatingly innocent grin, as she jumped back down from the counter and went to fetch herself a glass of water.
“Now Anna, don’t you think it’d be polite if I knew the poor girl’s name before the door opens?” Jack turned to Anna in appeal, whose eyes widened for a second. Throwing up her hands in mock surrender, the older woman stepped into the kitchen and sat down at the breakfast table, safely out of range of sauce splashes.
“Oh don’t look at me,” she shook her head and tried to smile widely, “I am strictly impartial in Mooney battles.”
“That means she thinks I’m right-“ Both of the Mooney’s spoke at the exact same time. All three of them lapsed into laughter.
Anna watched in amazement at the pair of them, so similar, and so close that at moments like this she felt like she was intruding on something, even after being in Jack’s life for over a year. A phone buzzed again, and Siobhan pulled it out of her pocket and lit up, her eyes locked on the screen. Jack and Anna shared a glance, and both smiled. In that moment she knew exactly what he was thinking, that whoever this woman was, it didn’t matter what her name was, or who she was, as long she could make Siobhan smile like that.
“Ok, I have to finish my make-up,” Siobhan put her phone back down, and kissed her dad on the cheek suddenly. “Don’t burn the house down!” She waved over her shoulder on her way back through to the hall, at the last minute sticking her head back around the door. “Seriously, don’t let him burn the house down Anna,” she teased, “Emergency services don’t make a good impression.” With a grin, the younger woman vanished again.
“Cheek!” Jack exhaled, his hands on his hips again, but his eyes twinkling with amusement. “I honestly don’t know where she gets that from, I tell you, good as gold she was as a little girl and now would you look at her,” he rambled. Anna smiled at her boyfriend, feeling a wave of affection sweeping through her.
“Oh, I know where she gets it from -That pan’s about to boil over-“ She warned him, and Jack leapt around to slide the pan off the heat before it began spitting everywhere. Anna stood up, and circled her arms around his waist, resting her head on his shoulder from behind. “But she definitely gets it from you.”
Jack leaned his head towards hers. “Well with luck that’ll be the only thing she gets from me. Thank god her looks are all her mother’s!” Anna chuckled, but gave him a squeeze, reserved for when he was being too hard on himself. The pair stood in comfortable silence for a minute, before Jack heaved an overly dramatic, restless sigh.
“I just hope she’s nice. Whoever this girl is, you know? I can’t help it. Now I know, believe me, I know, that anyone who can make Siobhan smile like that must be something pretty special, but the last time she ended up with her heart broken, you know? To see her like that… no father would ever wish that for their little girl, and to see her hurt like that again is more than I can stomach, you know?” He spoke quickly, voice lowered as though afraid Siobhan would overhear somehow.
Anna smiled gently. They both knew a thing or two about heartbreak. “She’s young,” Anna shrugged, but her voice was kind. “Young people fall in love easily, and get their hearts broken easily. Even you can’t protect her from that.”
“I know,” Jack sighed again, and shook his head. “Ach. I know I’m being a silly old man, but I can’t help but worry.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Anna pressed a kiss to his cheek, and the Irishman’s face creased into a bashful grin.
“But it’s true, you know. The way that little face of hers lights up whenever her phone buzzes. Whoever this lady is, she’s definitely nice enough for my Siobhan to be head over heels about her. I just hope she’s all that and more.”
“Me too.”
“Now, you go and sit down. I’ll be with you in a minute, I promise. This sauce just needs a final stir.”
Anna made a sceptical noise in the back of her throat, but after a final squeeze, she let Jack go and returned to her seat at the table.
No sooner had Jack actually managed to join her, than the doorbell echoed through the house. There was a loud thud upstairs, and the scraping of the chair over the kitchen floor as Jack stood up again. “I’ll get it Dad! Just a second!” Siobhan yelled down the stairs, but Jack was already half way to the door.
“Don’t be daft! It’s throwing down with rain out there,” Jack chided as he strode along the hallway towards the front door, where a figure was silhouetted behind the frosted glass, on the front step of the house. Throwing open the door, Jack put on his very best ‘meeting the daughter’s new partner’ face, before it disappeared completely as a very familiar figure turned around to face the door, and the now gobsmacked detective standing inside it.
“Hello Sir,” Florence smiled, head tilted and one side, her voice lilting over the words as they always did.
It took Jack the best part of ten seconds to recover from the sight of his long-lost Detective Sergeant on his doorstep, but his face slowly lit up in a gigantic grin, that he couldn’t keep off his face even as he chastised his former junior officer. “Florence! All this way, and you couldn’t spare me a text to warn me?”
There was a thudding on the stairs behind him as Siobhan came sprinting down them and practically skidded to a halt at the bottom as she saw her father at the door. She and Florence locked eyes, and Siobhan lit up into a grin just like her father’s, but with the mischief twinkling behind her eyes. Florence raised a hand, shyly, and waved her fingers once. The two young women practically glowed, only with eyes for each other.
Jack, oblivious, stood back to allow Florence inside the house. “But what in the world are you doing here, Florence? Not that I’m not delighted to see you of course, but it’s something of a special occasion you see, we’re supposed to be meeting Siobhan’s new girlfriend you see and –“
Behind him, Siobhan’s eyebrows creased for a moment into a puzzled frown, before she realised his mistake, and began to giggle into her hand.
His flustered rambling was cut off as Anna joined them in the hall. She hung back slightly, one hand on the wall. “Hi,” she smiled warmly at the beautiful newcomer, “You must be Siobhan’s girlfriend? I’m Anna,” she welcomed Florence, who turned to her and smiled warmly in response, having heard enough about Anna to know she was already a big fan of the woman.
“Yes, I’m Florence.”
“Yeah, this is Florence.”
“No! This is Florence.”
All three of them answered at the exact same time.
Anna’s lips wavered with a laugh.
Siobhan was biting her lip to hold back the laughter. Florence turned to her mentor with hesitation in her expression.
Jack stared between the two of them in an eerily familiar expression, as though he was about to crack a particularly difficult case. First the eyebrows creased together in a puzzled frown, and then – Siobhan couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing as his eyebrows suddenly flew up his forehead as the realisation hit him.
“Well I’ll be… Isn’t that something!”