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Jack, as he often did when he found himself inside of Miss Fisher's opulent home, felt a bit like an intruder.
Part of him was well aware he was being ridiculous. It wasn't as if he'd turned up uninvited; Miss Fisher herself had telephoned the station to request Jack's presence. Well. Perhaps “request” was an understatement. In reality, Miss Fisher had given one of her highly accurate impersonations of a tornado, declaring that there had been a new discovery concerning Miss Lavender's untimely death and that it simply couldn't wait until after eating, so of course it only made sense for him to join her, and he could make the trip from the station to her home in around fifteen minutes, couldn't he?
And then she'd hung up on him before he could reply.
While the phone call itself had certainly been direct, and her demands were clear indeed, that certainty had only held until Jack had been ushered inside by a confused looking Mr. Butler. Now, standing in Miss Fisher's dining room and holding up a set of chopsticks in the dimmed lighting that clearly had meant to be a romantic overture for someone else, he felt distinctly out of place. Either he (or the case) had interrupted her date, or he was filling in for one that had fallen through. Neither option was particularly... appealing.
He really should go. Perhaps he could wait for her in the drawing room, hear her news, and then come up with an excuse to leave.
As if she'd telepathically caught wind of his escape plan, Miss Fisher immediately breezed into the room, startling him as usual, and he proceeded to drop the chopsticks. She smirked at him, amusement clear, and he winced internally even as the amusement melted into something like pleasure. She always seemed pleased enough to see him, he supposed, though whenever he had the briefest sliver of time between cases to ponder, he couldn't quite say why she was always so pleased to see him. Given the company he was well aware she tended to keep (all of whom were likely quite adept with chopsticks), and the more, er, exciting lifestyle that she seemed to prefer, he was...well. Rather dull, really.
And he had no idea how to use the blasted chopsticks.
But then, he supposed those same implements at least explained why she'd invited him on this particular night and with such short notice. He'd passed Mr. Lin on the walkway outside, and the annoyed expression on the man's face was clue enough.
“Mr. Lin looks well,” he said, aiming to at least maintain some dignity (and indicate he wasn't fooled by any of it, thank you very much). “We crossed paths as he departed.”
Far from looking sheepish at being caught out, Miss Fisher simply continued to smile at him. “Hope you like Chinese food,” she said, sitting down herself, leaving him no choice but to awkwardly settle into his own seat. Jack decided to avoid eye contact entirely, instead focusing on Mr. Butler as the man blew out the candles and removed the elaborate many-candled object from the table.
“Is that better?” Miss Fisher asked, almost gently.
Jack didn't quite know what to make of that.
Luckily, she didn't give him much time to ponder before immediately launching into her new discoveries pertaining to the case. This was something that she often did, Jack noted absently. If Miss Fisher requested his presence somewhere outside of the station or a crime scene, she had a tendency to talk at him until he was fully wrapped up in her stories and what they might mean to the case, his mind leaping to form connections and relationships between new pieces of evidence and old. And truly, when she'd brought out with a flourish the little strips of message that she'd uncovered, he'd almost entirely forgotten she'd invited him for dinner as well as deduction. He reached for them, ready to begin their unspooling immediately, but before he could blink they'd been snatched away, re-folded into the napkin from whence she'd produced them.
“Later, Jack,” she said, a smirk teasing at the corners of her mouth. “Why, one would think you only came here to discuss work with me, not enjoy a pleasant dinner together.”
Jack glanced around at the food laid out before him, his face twitching in an attempt at a smirk that probably bore more resemblance to a grimace. “I was under the impression that the dinner was mostly secondary, given that this hardly could have been intended for me.”
There was a pause. “What's the matter, Jack?” Miss Fisher asked. “Don't you like Chinese food?”
She was watching him, and the uncharitable part of his mind supplied that, likely, she was waiting for a new chance to laugh at him. Well, she'd get one shortly. “Can't say I've had the pleasure,” he said, again looking with apprehension at the chopsticks.
He did finally look up when Miss Fisher abruptly pushed herself away from the table and strode towards the far side of the room. Jack blinked at the chair where she had been previously sitting before turning his head slightly to the side, trying to determine if she was simply retrieving something or outright leaving the room.
He thought that might be a bit dramatic, even for her.
But a moment later she had returned, except not to her own chair. Instead she stepped to his right, leaning over his shoulder. He could smell her perfume, and whatever she used to wash her hair, and he tried most valiantly not to form an opinion on the scents.
He wasn't that strong a man.
But when she proceeded to remove the chopsticks, instead providing him with regular cutlery with nothing more than a wink – no commentary on his lack of worldliness, or disparagement concerning what must have been most obvious nervousness – Jack couldn't help but very, very slightly relax into the feel of her at his side.
“Is that better?” she asked again, voice quiet and almost directly in his ear.
He swallowed. “Yes, Miss Fisher,” he said, just as quietly. “Thank you.”
“Good,” she said.
However, when he reached out to collect the fork, suddenly her hand was pressing down on his, nimble fingers arresting his progress towards the new cutlery.
“Ah! That's not to say you don't have to try the chopsticks!” she said, and there was the Miss Fisher he was most familiar with, along with the equally familiar twin strands of amusement and irritation that stirred within him in her wake.
“I fail to see how that can be a requirement when you've just taken the contraptions from me,” he replied, eyes still stuck on her hand over his.
She laughed. “Contraptions? Jack, they're sticks of wood.” She squeezed his hand once before letting go, tapping her fingertips up his arm as she crossed behind him and returned to her own seat.
“It counts as a contraption if I don't know how to use it,” Jack grumbled, trying not to let his mind linger on the barely there touch, instead focusing on how she adeptly lifted her own set of chopsticks, fitting them between the fingers that had just been on his hand.
“Oh Jack,” Miss Fisher replied, pulling one of the dishes towards her. “You sound like a curmudgeon.”
“Are you calling me old, Miss Fisher?” he asked as he watched her scoop up something round and brown.
She smiled at him. “To call you old, Jack, would be to similarly condemn myself. Now open up.”
Suddenly, the chopsticks with the round, brown object were hovering directly before him. Jack jerked his head backward ever so slightly before he regained control of himself.
“Miss Fisher,” he said, voice dipping low in a warning that would have chastised normal individuals, but naturally just made her smirk grow wider.
“Detective Inspector,” she replied, moving the chopsticks even closer. “You have to try this at least once – it's part of the experience."
He gave her his best withering look (he never should have taken the gratin from her that day back in his office – apparently that set a precedent in her mind), but he felt something unfurl inside of him. Before he could overthink it further, he shook his head, closing his eyes, and when Miss Fisher took the opportunity of his distraction to tap his lips with the food, he allowed her to feed it to him.
He frowned as he chewed. “Tastes like chicken.”
He opened his eyes in time to see Miss Fisher grin, plucking a piece for herself with the same sticks and bringing it to her mouth, red bottom lip leaving a slight smudge on the lower stick. When she reached for another piece, proffering it to him again, Jack felt his face warm slightly.
“Miss Fisher,” he protested, very firmly not looking at the red mark which made all the more obvious the intimacy they were sharing over this one pair of chopsticks.
“Oh, you're no fun,” she said, but she dropped the food onto his plate instead, followed by a more fulfilling serving. “For each new option, though, I get to serve you the first bite. It's a rule.”
“There is absolutely no such rule,” Jack replied, even though he already knew he would be giving in.
“Jack, you have more rules than cricket,” she said. “It's only fair that I get to implement a few myself.”
Jack couldn't help but smile. “Cricket? That seems like an obscure reference, coming from you. But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.”
Miss Fisher shrugged one elegant shoulder. “We all have our little surprises, Inspector.”
Jack broke eye contact again under the pretense of looking over the other bowls of exotic foods. “Not me, I'm afraid,” he said.
There was a pause, and then Miss Fisher tapped his hand with the chopsticks. “In all honesty, Jack, you've quite turned out to be one of my favorite surprises.”
He did look up then, blinking at the fondness he found softening her features, the pleased little smile tugging at her lips, eyes warm as she watched him. He'd seen a plethora of expressions cross her face, some more frequently than others (the look she got when she was teasing him, for instance, or the pout she directed at him whenever he made her leave a crime scene), but this was one he was fairly certain he'd only seen her direct at, well. Miss Williams. Or Jane. Sometimes Collins, if he was doing something especially wide-eyed.
Part of him felt as if he should be mildly offended, but he wasn't. She reserved that look for people she cared about, people she seemed to enjoy surrounding herself with. And if she she was a million different things, half of them contradictory, the one thing Jack was fairly certain Miss Fisher was not was a liar.
So, when she immediately scooped up something out of another bowl and held it out to him, demanding “Now come on, Jack! We've still got murders to solve after I'm done broadening your horizons”, he simply sighed and let himself be fed strange things to the sound of her laughter.