The stakeout has run all night, and Bert is already snoring like a hacksaw in the passenger seat, so Cec is the one driving the cab back to Melbourne.
The sun rises rosy around them and the silence is complete, the exhausted kind, where breaking it feels like you’re trying to talk through a cloud of dreams. Cec taps the wheel and hums to himself, knowing the other passengers won’t hear over Bert's snores anyway.
In the back seat, Inspector Robinson laughs softly, a ragged sound from a man so ordinarily uptight.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Miss Fisher says.
“I was just thinking—driving with you can be relaxing. So long as you’re not at the wheel.”
Cec glances at them through the rear view mirror; Miss Fisher elbows him, and Robinson chuckles again, and the cloud of silence settles again over their lingering smiles.
It is another hour before they arrive at Wardlow. Bert jerks awake with a grunt as soon as the engine shuts off; he looks around suspiciously, notes the abrupt daylight and the familiar environs, and finally slides his eyes sideways to Cec.
Cec beams too-brightly at Bert. “Good morning, Sleeping Beauty.”
“Stuff it,” Bert grumbles, without heat. He looks into the backseat and abruptly closes his mouth on whatever smart remark would’ve come next.
Miss Fisher and Inspector Robinson have dozed off, leaning against each other with her head on his shoulder. At the sudden quietness of the car, Miss Fisher, too, stirs, and blinks at her surroundings, utterly still. She catches the eyes of the cabbies, and winks, and settles in snug as a bug.
“Five more minutes, then, free of charge,” Bert says.
"You're very benevolent today, Sleeping Beauty."
“Stuff it," Bert repeats, and adds more thoughtfully, "Think Butler’s got his scones out of the oven by now?”
“We're late, I bet. Maybe Dot's got some tea for us?” Cec says conversationally, and they step from the cab, closing the doors quietly behind them.
Oooh, hello! "Coffee smell" (or "vintage dress," if you work better if you have ✨options✨) for Phrack in case you do decide to do something with the list 👀☕️💕
Thank you for being the only person who actually sent me something lmao! Appreciated! I picked "Vintage dress" because it reminded me of a silly exchange I had with @ozqueen recently, where we came up with the following scenario. Naturally, I wanted her to write a little something about it but your prompt kind of spurred me on. Does it make sense? Not really.
“Ja-ackk... get it off. Now please.”
“I’m trying, Miss Fisher. If you would just stand still for a second, let me —”
A barely audible whimper escaped her quivering mouth as she stomped her heeled foot like a stubborn child that didn’t get what it wanted. On second thought, a child would have been easier to handle than an agitated and slightly panicked Miss Fisher who refused to cooperate even when it was for her own benefit.
Interrupting his musings, she unexpectedly turned around in a flash, fidgeting and flailing with her arms, the expression on her face transforming into one of disgust.
“Urgh, I felt it moving! I can feel it crawling on my back, Jack, do something!”
The man in question couldn’t suppress a slightly exasperated eye roll, the one he had reserved specifically for Phryne-is-giving-me-grief situations.
“Hold still, woman. I can’t see where it is if you keep moving around like a toddler.”
To make a point and to stop her from moving, he did something risqué and stepped on the hem of her dress that, conveniently, reached all the way to the floor. He inwardly prayed she wouldn’t be miffed about it as long as he managed to get the spider off of her. What he didn’t anticipate, though, was that the jumping spider suddenly decided to switch location in one giant leap, only to end up on the side of her neck.
What happened next was akin to something out of his admittedly inappropriate night dreams that featured the lady detective quite frequently as of late. As soon as Phryne felt the ticklish little eight legs against her skin she let out a high pitched scream and leaped, practically imitating her arachnid nemesis, forward, as though hopping about like a bouncy ball would solve the problem. No, it caused another, entirely different one. The stretch between the hem of the dress trapped underneath his shoe and Phryne’s hasty movements caused the elasticity of the dress to yield. The fabric began to tear all the way from the bottom to the top seem where it connected with the strapless bodice hugging the curves of her torso. The dress lost its hold and layers of shiny, presumably expensive fabric fell off her body like the skin of a peeled onion.
Phryne must have either not registered what had happened or simply did not care. Her fearful eyes flicking to and fro in desperate search for the sneaky creature. It must have escaped for good as it was no longer resting on the smooth expanse of her neck, Jack concluded almost enviously, after he had finally managed to tear his eyes away from her barely clad form.
“I-is it gone?” she whispered.
“I think so.”
A heavy sigh of relief escaped her ruby lips and her bare shoulders slumped in a relaxed manner. It was only then that she noticed her state of undress, her eyes widening in shock this time.
“My dress! Oh no!”
“I will get you a new one," he offered remorsefully, "I apologize.”
“Ah don’t be silly! There is no need. Madame Fleuri, however, shall never hear of this or she’ll rip my head off. Oh well, nothing the lovely Dot couldn’t fix. It’s vintage and basically irreplaceable...," she paused. "And so is the lingerie. At least that one’s still intact. Perhaps... you could check... just to make sure?”
She lowered her eyelashes coquettishly and dropped the remaining fabric that had clung to her frame only a second prior, revealing a rather sheer forest green set of a silk cami set that was covering only the most necessary bits of pale rosy flesh. It left little to Jack’s imagination. To be fair, he had seen her in less, the pink feathers of her dance interlude branded into his memory most likely forever. But the lingerie currently facing him looked outright lethal on her. He closed his eyes, forcing his brain to revert back to professional Robbo mode.
“You’re killing me, Miss Fisher,” is all he could mutter under the circumstances, unsure if it wasn’t just one of his fervent dreams after all. Either way, undaunted by his previous faux pas, Jack decided to take yet another risk. He slipped out of his coat and draped it around her bare shoulders, purposely avoiding her fiery, curious gaze as he pulled, with slightly shaky hands, the first two buttons through the holes. And if his fingers happened to skim her flushed skin underneath in the process, it was entirely accidental of course.
~~~~~~~ * ~~~~~~~~
Trigger for this idea was this picture of Essie. Someone please reassure us that this is in fact badly photoshopped and not an actual chair standing on her dress. Who on earth would let something like that slide? 😂
Hello!!! 🥰 September prompt list, #8 for Phrack, please!
8. You are radiant and forever. (Phryne Fisher/Jack Robinson) (Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries)
“There’s something to be said,” opined Phryne drowsily, “for social niceties.”
Jack, who was adjusting his tie in her mirror, glanced over at her in amusement. “Is that so? Now, I never thought I’d hear such a confession from you.” He finished making himself presentable and perched on the edge of the bed he had so recently vacated. “Whatever happened to damn the conventions and full-steam ahead?”
“Well,” Phryne said, her voice still syrupy with sleep, but her eyes clear and shining up at him, “if I hadn’t had to behave myself last night, we’d have come away from that lecture much earlier.”
“Mhmm, and gotten to sleep much earlier, too. As it was, we were up very, very late.”
“I don’t recall you complaining,” she purred, reaching up to run fine-boned hands over his broad shoulders. His sadly clothed shoulders.
“Oh,” Jack rumbled, “no complaints at all. You were radiant last night.”
Phryne pouted, though behind the coquettishness, she was laughing. “Only last night?”
“Correction: you are forever radiant. You are, in fact, both radiant and forever.” Reluctantly, he removed her hands from his person. “What is not forever, regrettably, is my ability to lounge about with you in bed.”
She let out a groan and rolled over in disgust, pulling a pillow over her head to shut out the daylight. “I’d argue with you, but I know better. You’re a terrible man to have in bed when you’ve made up your mind to be elsewhere.”
“All the more reason for me to leave, so that I can come back when I’m good and ready.”
“And if that’s just when I’m ready to be out on the town?”
Jack grinned and kissed the bit of shoulder still peeking out between pillow and sheet. “Then at least you’ll know where to find me when you’re done.”
Hellooo! I don't fully understand the imaginary fic thing, but I've deduced from your recent post that they don't have to be titles and we can send you quotes instead 😂 For Phryne and Jack (from the P!nk song "Long Way to Go"): "Don't you realize / That all my demons and fears disappear now? / When you stay up with me, up with me all night / I wanna show you my scars in the daylight"
Thank you! 🥰
imaginary fic title prompts!
“It’s stupid.”
With two fingers, Phryne holds the sleeve of Jack’s robe, like he is a specimen to be inspected; this exposes the white swath of scar down his ribs to the sunlight. She raises her eyebrows without releasing him, prompting him to continue.
“In Paris,” he says, “in the war.” Jack pauses, just long enough for Phryne to hold her breath—she had picked this scar for its unusual location and unclear origins, so unlike the ones clearly inflicted by service on the front—but then he relents, “We were on leave, and I used mine to learn to ride a motorcycle. Skidded out in front of an entire café of onlookers.”
Phryne drops his sleeve to try, and fail, to cover her laugh.
“I am aware it’s hardly brave.”
“Oh, but it doesn't need to be; it is very dashing, Jack. Women love a man with scars. Including this one.”
“I couldn’t tell,” he says dryly, as he sits mostly naked in her bed.
Phryne grins and returns to her task, tracing the coarse rippling edge of the scar with her fingertips. “Did they pick much gravel out of it?” she asks.
“So much gravel,” he says, gravely. “I thought I would never leave that surgery room.”
Hellooo! "Night" for Phryne and Jack for the ask game, please 🥰
32. night
“This seems…inadvisable.”
Phryne peers down at him and offers her hand; by the moonlight her eyes are colorless, but no less keen as she says, “Come, Jack, even if it were, do you think I could be dissuaded?”
Jack concedes the point. Had the hour been any younger—had he had one less glass of brandy—had she been any less earnestly solicitous—he could, perhaps, have protested more fiercely to this sojourn to the roof of Wardlow. As it is, he takes her hand, clambers up, folds himself cross-legged beside her upon the tiles still warm from the day’s setting sun, and enjoys Phryne’s setting of her head on his shoulder in comfortable, sighing silence.
of course!! by the obvious working title this one is about jack and collins at the tail end of season 3 when collins is briefly couch surfing, a storyline that i feel needed a little more time in the oven.
so my solution was to have jack offer to let collins stay with him while he deals with his early 20s crisis. just two guys who already spend all day together spending even more time together but now they have to be weird about like, scheduling dinner and staggering baths. collins is SO awkward, and jack definitely can be too; it's a lot of fun to write :)
a little snippet:
[Jack] keeps a guest room for his sisters and brother on their rare visits to Melbourne, but is home rarely himself. Keeping the hearth instead is Benedick the cat, who waltzed in the kitchen door one winter as a shivering kitten and never left. The house, therefore, is comfortable and sound, but plain—he has not entertained in months. Or has it been years? Miss Fisher would be scandalized, in as much as she is capable of such a feeling.
Collins for his part does not seem to notice or care; he is merely relieved. All his worldly possessions fit in two carpetbags, clenched in each fist, which lift and then drop with his shoulders as Collins heaves a sigh. Benedick’s eyes gleam from beneath the sofa, watching the entry hallway with oblique scorn and suspicion.
“Thank you, sir,” he says again.
“That’ll be the sixth time you’ve said that today, Collins. Please—it’s the least I could do.”
My most memorable scene from your fics is the awkward and pun-filled conversation after Hugh shoots Jack in the "hip" 😍😂 And my honorable mentions go to the scene where Jack tells Mac that her neighbor doesn't like mahjong, and "Jack Robinson, did you sex-proof your hair?" 😂😂😂
“Hip, Collins, say it with me, hip."
😂
I'm delighted my puns stuck with you, my dear, you know how fond I am of them.
Also, funny story, both of your honorable mentions are the lines those particular fics were written around, which makes me feel really good about the end results. Thank you. ❤️
what's the most memorable scene from any fanfic of mine you've read?
You're getting a list of things to talk about because they all sound too good to pick just one: Simon Abrahams, Bitey Bitey, Phryne wears Jack's desert clothes, Letters misunderstandings, and the Maharajah didn't die? 😃😂 (Also the sad chair one if you're not sick of this yet)
I'm splitting this into two or three parts because it's LOMG.
1. Something about it: I think it's a damn shame Phryne never got to have her way with Genuinely Nice (and Attractive!) Jewish Boy™ SImon Abrahams, and that is one non-Phrack pairing I would really like to see written, so this WIP is me tossing around ways to have them shag in fic. I have very little written because I spent most of the time waffling in my outline notes about whether to make it an angsty ficlet set between BatW and Framed For Murder (nicknamed "The Great Separation"), or to make it a semi-comedic flashbacks-with-Phrack-framing longer piece where Simon, idk, marries Concetta or something, scandalizing both their families.
2. Snippet:
The mark stared at him balefully, its location foreboding in its implications. Not that a bite mark could stare, necessarily, let alone in a baleful manner, but somehow this one managed to do so. Something about the way it just peeked over the front edge of his inner thigh, requiring him to turn a knee out to get a full look at it. Something about the fact that he couldn't remember how he might possibly have acquired it — or more accurately, how she might have given it to him. Two perfect oval hemispheres of bruising, red with the faintest edging of purple, against the white skin of his leg. Through the grace of whatever higher power was looking out for him, at least half of the mark was covered by the leg of his swimming costume — but if, God forbid, Miss Fisher had a more comprehensive memory of the evening before than he, how could he possibly face her on the beach, with her smug, satisfied, canary-eating grin?
The image of that grin sent a shiver down his spine; even under oath, he wouldn't be able to testify if it was fear or arousal. There was nothing for it — he'd have to brazen his way through the next hour or two, and hope that Phryne Fisher's eyes strayed no lower than his waist.
Rightio.
Send me an ask with the title that most intrigues you and I’ll post a little snippet of it or tell you something about it!
