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“Hello, Jack!”
Hunched over, as he was, at his kitchen counter, Jack heard her before he saw her, musing absently as he prepared his dinner that that was how it had happened the day he met her as well — a disembodied voice calling from another room and then boom, suddenly she’s there and his life is changed forever.
Still shelling peas in a bowl, Jack smiled to himself and wondered what she had in store for his life today.
“You’re cooking? Alone? On a Saturday night? Oh Jack…”
Ah. Apparently judgement.
“Miss Fisher,” he greeted mildly, adding the peas to the pot on the stove and wiping his hands on a dishtowel. He turned around to finally face her, leaning back against the countertop. “I’m surprised to see you tonight; I could have sworn I locked my front door.”
She waved a hand in the air, dismissing that fact as inconsequential.
“Oh, Jack, you know locks can’t stop me.”
Hip lip quirked as he fought back a smile. “I am aware, yes. So, have you just come to prove the uselessness of my home security or did you need something?”
She crossed her arms meaningfully. “Well I had hoped to find the place empty, I’ll admit.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“No you’re not,” she retorted, moving over to the stove so she could see what he was cooking. “Risotto?” she asked.
Jack nodded.
“Takes an awfully long time to make,” she noted and he shrugged.
“I’m a patient man,” he reminded her. “Now move, I need to add the cheese.”
“I think we both know I’m not stopping you,” she cheeked, but moved across the room anyway. “And, might I add, if you’re really in the mood for Italian tonight, there is a lovely little place on Queensberry — ”
“No,” he said flatly and Phryne huffed.
“You’re being stubborn,” she said.
“You’re one to talk,” he grumbled, adding in the parmesan slowly so it would melt evenly.
“Come on, Jack! Go out. Live a little! You could be there in 20 minutes!”
“Uh, no thanks. I have dinner right here.”
“They have excellent wine.”
“And mine,” he picked up the glass he’d poured earlier and took a sip. “Is… adequate,” he admitted, looking at the bottle and making a note to skip this vintage going forward.
Still, it wouldn’t do to give up a point so early in the night. “Cheers,” he said instead, and took another sip.
Phryne narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re in awfully good spirits tonight.” Jack raised an eyebrow meaningfully at that and she huffed. ”Oh, you know what I mean.”
She looked like she wanted to flop down in exasperation but she refrained, though whether that was due to an adherence to etiquette or simple physics, he didn’t know.
Jack turned back to the stove, stirring the rice. “I don’t understand why you want so badly for me to spend my hard earned civil servant’s salary on someone else’s cooking when my own is perfectly acceptable and right here.”
“And I don’t understand why you stopped going to Strano’s!”
Halfway through its rotation, the wooden spoon stopped in the pot. Jack’s voice, when he spoke, was low. “You know why,” he said.
“Jack — ”
“It wouldn’t have been fair to her.”
“I”m not asking you to marry her, Jack. Just… see what’s there.”
Jack resumed his stirring, keeping his eyes fixed on the pot before him. “I know what’s there. She knows what’s there.” He sighed. “What she’s looking for… I can’t give her. And anything less wouldn’t be fair.”
Behind him, he heard Phryne sigh. “Good lord, Jack, you’re old fashioned even by my lot’s standards.”
“Sorry to disappoint,” he said.
“No, you’re not,” she replied.
“No, I’m not,” he agreed. The food was almost cooked now. He moved to grab a plate, stepping around her out of habit. She wagged her finger at him as he reached up to the shelf.
“You’ve gotten so boring, Jack. What happened?”
He shrugged, pulling the plate down and turning back to face her.
“Well this irksome lady detective showed up, started appearing everywhere I went, following me around…”
“I do not follow you around,” she insisted.
Jack raised an eyebrow. “Then the coincidences are staggering.”
“What about dancing?”
Jack paused, plate halfway to the countertop as he took in the non sequitur and, apparently, her latest suggestion for his Saturday night. “Dancing?”
“Yes, dancing. You know, you listen to music more modern than Beethoven and move your arms. Maybe even your hips if you’re feeling especially wild.”
“Miss Fisher, my hips have not been wild since the turn of the century.”
“More’s the pity.”
Jack gave her a look and shook his head.
“I think, perhaps, you’re in the wrong Detective Inspector’s flat tonight, Miss Fisher. You want DI Good Times, down the hall. I’m the one with the draughts board and the stamp collection.”
Phryne glared.
“Well, Jack, maybe you’d enjoy dancing more without that stick up yo — ”
“If you want to dance, so badly,” he interrupted her, pulling out a fork, “I know of several mostly legal establishments you can go anytime you like.”
“It’s not for me!” she exclaimed loudly and he frowned at the slightly plaintive note in her voice.
That was new.
“I don’t need Strano’s and I don’t need dancing,” Jack assured her. He moved to return to the stove but she stepped forward to block his path. He rolled his lips in frustration. “What I do need is to take my risotto off the heat before it burns. Please move.”
“No,” she said, crossing her arms and practically stamping her feet. “Not until you agree to go out tonight.”
“Miss Fisher, that’s absurd, why — ”
“Promise me you’ll go out and I’ll get out of your way. Otherwise…” She shrugged her shoulders and let the threat, empty though it was, hang in the air.
“Phryne, please move,” he repeated, quietly. She tipped her chin up in defiance and he sighed. Then, with a shrug of his own, he moved, passing through her like a bird through the mist.
For a moment, there was silence.
“That was low,” she said finally, and he didn’t disagree, so he didn’t respond. Instead, he turned off the gas stove and plated his meal, carrying that and the glass of wine out to his living room couch.
He took a sip and a bite and waited for her to join him. Eventually, she did, as he knew she would, though she stayed standing by the side of the couch instead of invading his space like she normally did.
“You’re being weird,” he said, to which she frowned, but didn’t otherwise reply. “I mean it, you’re being weird. Well… weirder than this,” he gestured between them, “already is.”
“And you’re being an ass,” she told him hotly.
Jack shrugged. “Probably. But that doesn’t explain why you’re being weird.”
“Jack…” Her tone had a warning to it that he promptly ignored.
“I mean it. Why is this so important to you tonight?” he asked. “Why all of the sudden are you so worried about my social life?”
“Because I saw you today!” she all but shouted. “With that witness, the film production… whatever she was. She was flirting with you. And you liked her, I could tell. But you just… Nothing! Not even a ‘here’s my number if you need anything.’ Professional Jack, through and through!”
He tilted his head to the side in consideration.
“And that bothered you?” he asked.
“Yes! No? I…” She flung her arms up in frustration. “You can’t keep choosing me, Jack! I’m not… I’m not here.”
He looked at her, long and hard enough that she shifted from the intensity.
“I beg to differ,” he said finally. “You must be here. I can see you.”
She looked back at him, her expression softening just a little. “I can see you,” he repeated quietly, and she nodded minutely.
He patted the seat next to him with his free hand, and, with a soft exhale, she came and sat beside him.
They were quiet, then, for a long time. Finally Jack turned.
“You’d really rather I have flirted back?” he asked and Phryne rolled her eyes.
“No, of course not,” she said. “I’m dead, I'm not a saint.”
He chuckled.
“No,” he agreed and she moved to punch his arm, pulling back just before she would have passed through him.
“It’s been a while,” he said, taking another sip of wine. “Since you tried to bully me into ending this.”
“I don’t bully,” she said imperiously. “I encourage. Helpfully.”
“Somehow,” he said, “I suspect that if I’d known you when you were alive, your encouragement would have taken the form of actual manhandling.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught her smirk. “You would have liked my manhandling.”
“I’ve no doubt of that, Miss Fisher, I’ve no doubt of that.” He took another sip, put the half-eaten plate of risotto down on the coffee table. “You could leave too, you know. Probably. We solved your sister’s cold case a long time ago.”
“You know I don’t know how it works,” she reminded him. “And, obviously, I’ve tried to move on,” she added, her voice going up a little higher than usual as she did. He let it slide. Let the silence ride. Phryne broke it first.
“And I’d miss you.” she admitted.
“I’d miss you too,” he said, as easy as breathing. “So why the freak out today?”
She twisted the hem of her skirt; it had probably been the height of fashion 80 years ago.
“I just… Jack, I really really loved living my life. I don’t want to be the reason you don’t live yours.”
He sighed, wishing for probably the millionth time that he could hold her hand. He asked her a question instead.
“How many people can see you, Miss Fisher?”
She blinked. She knew he knew the answer to that. She humoured him anyway.
“Almost no one.”
“Well…” He said slowly, trying to make her understand. “Ironically, I feel very much the same way. About myself. But we… we see each other. That’s… it has to mean something.”
She smiled at him, but it was sad around the edges.
“I didn’t say it didn’t.”
“Then why — ”
“You deserve more, Jack.”
Jack frowned, shaking his head. He didn't quite know how to convince her. But he was a policeman, always, so he figured why not start with the evidence. He pulled his phone from his pocket, unlocked it, and slid it over.
“Go on,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows in surprise.
“You never let me see your phone,” she said. “I was beginning to think you still had a rotary.”
“I do,” he teased. “It’s in the conservatory. My butler usually answers it. But this one has my calendar. So you tell me — do I look lonely?”
He saw her take in his various events and clubs and family dinners. Things she knew about already but perhaps didn’t always translate so well across the void. Then he saw her trying to figure out a way to snoop more on his phone and suppressed a laugh.
There were so many reasons he loved this woman.
“Phryne, I promise you, I have a very rich and fulfilling life. And part of that is you. My heart is taken. Concetta knows it, I know it, and you know it too.” He smiled, small but genuine. “It is, I will admit, a rather long distance relationship — ”
She snorted.
“ — but it’s real.” He took a deep breath. “If you ever need to go, if you ever want to go, I won’t stop you. I won’t even ask you to stay, I would never ask you to do that. And I promise, if I ever feel like this is… unsustainable for me, I will tell you. But until then, please, just trust me when I say that this is enough for me. You are… you are more than enough.”
She looked at him then, hard, as though trying to see through his mind the way she could pass through his body. She must have found what she was looking for, because she nodded and placed her hand on his. He couldn’t feel it, of course, but he knew it was difficult for her to hover there without just floating through, and he appreciated the gesture all the more for her effort.
“We don’t know,” she said, not looking at him. “What happens when you… and even if we can be together then… Well I know I’m the optimist, but that’s a lot of years left, Jack.”
Jack quirked an eyebrow. “I love how the optimistic viewpoint is my early death.”
She huffed, but thankfully left her hand where it was.
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. But, for now, you just be optimistic and me…” His eyes drifted down to his half-eaten risotto. “I’ll be patient.”
“You should still enjoy it,” she said, double meaning as subtle as a golden gun to the side of the head. “Before it gets cold.”
Jack nodded, picking up the fork again with his free hand. Phryne leaned over.
“Is it good?” she asked, because before she was anything else she was forever curious. He smiled and held it up to her for a better look.
“It’s delicious,” he told her. “I’m only sorry I can’t share any.”
She laughed, forever teasing him about his unquenchable appetite.
“No, you’re not.”
Jack looked at her, serious now.
“Yes, I am,” he promised. “But I’ll enjoy it for both of us, ok?”
“Ok,” she replied. She was quiet then, and so was he, the only sound the tinkle of his fork hitting the bowl.
“Jack?” she asked finally, breaking the silence.
“Yes?” he said, giving her his full attention.
“Earlier?”
“Hmmm?”
“When you were talking about being seen?”
“I remember.”
“Well… that wasn’t the correct use of ‘ironically’.”
“What?”
“Earlier. You used ‘ironically’ incorrectly.”
“Phryne — ”
“I mean it, Jack. I’m well versed in these things. I haunted my friend’s university for well over a decade and they have an excellent English department. I have three doctorates, you know. Or I would if…” She waved her hands. “Bloody corporalists,” she added in annoyance.
Jack rolled his eyes. “Have you really nothing better to do with your Saturday night than correct my grammar? Why don’t you go haunt an abandoned house or something?”
Phryne lifted her chin hastily. “Please, Jack, I’m a lady; it’s the Highland moors or nothing.”
“Unlikely. There’s nobody there. You’d die a second time of boredom after a fortnight.”
“Or I’d start a truly epic urban legend and bring the people to me.”
“Equally likely,” he agreed, and she laughed, the sound filling his flat and his heart.
Phryne was right, of course. She usually was. This might ultimately prove unsustainable.
But for now, this — dinner and banter and laughter with the woman he loved…
This was more than enough.