They lay together, tangled in Jane's sheets, panting.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph."
"Jane!" Maura said, slapping the detective's thigh. "What would your mother say if she heard you use those names to express sexual gratification?"
"I...hope my mother never hears me express sexual gratification and therefore I never find out what she'd say."
She felt Maura smile against her chest. "I hope so too. While I don't mind discussing sex in the abstract with your mother, I try to avoid the specifics of our lovemaking."
"Good," Jane was still languid and dopey, so Maura's words took a few seconds to register. "Wait. You try to av-...Maura, why are you talking about sex with my mother, at all?"
Maura shrugged against her. "Sometimes she has questions. She's just curious Jane, I'm sure it'll wear off eventually."
"She has questions?" Jane squeaked. "She's a fiftysomething year old woman. Surely she's figured out what goes where by now?"
Maura lifted her head to smile affectionately at her lover.
"Jane, she has questions about what women do with each other. It's quite sweet really. Be grateful that she takes such an interest in your life."
"Not my sex life, Maura!" Jane was appalled. "That's...that's too much. That's not right."
"It's perfectly healthy to discuss sex, Jane. It's a natural human need, a very basic one in fact. Maslow placed it alongside food and shel-"
"Babe, please don't make sex all sciencey again. You know it weirds me out. "
"But Jane, sex is science. Reproduction is a biologi-"
"Maura, what we just did had nothing to do with reproduction."
"Well, though it would not result in conception, we did it because it made us feel good and we hoped to achieve orgasm, which is a chemical reward our body grants us to make reproduction an attractive propos-"
"Maura, I like sex. It's fun. I like you. A lot. I like having sex with you. Let's leave it at that, huh?"
Maura smiled. "You like me a lot?" Her tone was teasing, but Jane knew she needed to hear it.
"I love you, you gigantic goofball," Jane murmured, pressing her lips against Maura's forehead. "And as much as I like having sex with you, sometimes I think I maybe like this even more..."
She glanced down at their bodies, moulded against each other, fitting perfectly. Maura wiggled her hips, pushing herself even closer
"The desire to be close after sex relates to the need for protection and safety while the egg and th-"
"I thought we just agreed to the no science talk thing?" Jane's voice was the kind of mock stern that she knew Maura now recognised as teasing. It had taken a little while for them to get there, resulting in some tears and hurt feelings along the way.
Maura's eyebrows were drawn together, scrunching her brow up in thought. "I don't recall agreeing to any such thing."
"Well...you didn't, but I kinda hoped that telling you how much I love you would distract you from it."
A smile broke over Maura's face and she leaned up to drop a sweet kiss on Jane's cheek.
"Let's compromise." Jane almost sighed, because Maura was using the voice that Jane knew would result in her agreeing to whatever this 'compromise' was. "I will agree not to discuss the biological imperatives behind sexual intercourse..." Maura's hand rubbed soothing circles on Jane's abdomen. "...and the chemicals released during the act..." She let her fingers skirt over the scar tissue at Jane's side. "...as long as you agree that it's okay for me to continue answering your mother's questions."
Jane considered the offer. The thought of Angela and Maura discussing any kind of sex was disturbing in the extreme, but perhaps it was worth it to keep Maura's pillow talk away from the more scientific aspects of what it meant that Jane liked to snuggle after sex.
"Fine. You can answer my Ma's nosey questions. As long as I'm not anywhere near either of you when you do it."
"Oh, but Jane..." Maura was downright sultry now, her pout so honed that Jane was convinced that she had made it a point to study how the perfect pout was composed during her micro-expression work. "I like being near you."
Jane grinned and shifted her weight so that she was lying on top of a prone Maura. "Oh yeah? Well, I'm not sure you could get much nearer right now."
Maura kissed her chin. "But I can try."