A/N: This ficlet was written for the RizzlesSecretSanta tumblr for luvknot. It was supposed to be a Christmas gift, but I wrote it around Thanksgiving and I just couldn't do the holly and mistletoe thing yet. I hope she didn't mind.
This is COMPLETED so you don't have to worry about putting an alert on it. Thank you so much for reading!
Just One Job
She just had one job.
"You just have one job, Maur." Jane calls back over her shoulder as she pulls on her coat then nearly tips onto her face leaning over to yank her boots on and zip them up. "Make sure my Ma makes a pan of stuffing with oysters but without craisins."
"But they lend a tart sweetness –"
"Stop. Just stop. I don't want my stuffing to have a," Jane rolls her eyes as she pulls her kit belt around her waist, "tart sweetness. I want it to taste like stuffing, not Smarties. Please, Maura?" And with the combined forces of thumbs tucked into her belt and puppy dog eyes, Maura is a goner.
"Alright. I'll try to sneak some off to the side."
"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" And before Maura can brace herself, Jane wraps her up in bouncing exuberance, and then plants an enthusiastic kiss on her cheek. Maura's heart is still bouncing when Jane lopes out the door and shouts back into the house. "I'll be back in three hours. Don't let Ma boss you around!"
Maura had offered to host Thanksgiving at her house this year, what with Angela staying in the guest house and random Rizzolis constantly gracing her doorstep. Plus, she couldn't resist those eyes that Jane had thrown at her when she'd asked the doctor her plans for the holiday.
"Hey, so I was wondering." Jane hopped up on one of the empty autopsy tables, legs swinging as she fiddled with the scars on her hands. She brought her head up and trapped Maura with those velvety brown eyes. "Are you going to go and visit your parents for the holiday?"
Of course that had been her intention. She'd not heard a word from Hope since Paddy's trial, Cailin kept in touch as well as any college kid does, so Constance and her father were the assumed destination. She's gone to St Martin, Geneva, or Aix-en-Provence every year since her parents had bought holiday homes in those locations. This year she's pretty sure it's Geneva, but she'd have to call to confirm. According to her calendar, that call was to happen tomorrow morning in the hour before work that she typically assigned to completing personal tasks before wading through the piles of unorganized paperwork that inevitably ended up on her desk.
"Well, that is what I have done for previous Thanksgivings."
The pause had been long and Maura found she couldn't maintain eye contact. Her stomach fluttered strangely. "I've always found it a bit ironic that we never celebrated the holiday in The States." She'd rambled, unable to understand the prickling hair on the back of her neck or the crop of goose bumps that bloomed on her arms. "I should have booked a flight months ago, but it slipped my mind—."
"I can't imagine why…I mean, it's not like you had major surgery or anything." Jane's voice is so heavily laden in sarcasm, Maura had been surprised the words hadn't clattered to the floor, solid in their disdain. Maura watched in utter fascination as Jane fought with her emotions, apprehension and desire in a shoot-out for control of her face. "God, just, those people. Your family, I don't have words. You –you deserve so much better… I mean, it's not really any better but, I –I wanted to see if maybe you'd want to stay in Boston this year and have Thanksgiving with my family."
Maura had been speechless for long enough that Jane backtracked and tried to rescind the offer with waving hands.
"Jane, stop. I'd be honored. I've always wanted an excuse to make beef Wellington…"
"Turkey, Maur. We eat turkey, and if you're lucky Ma will make the mashed potatoes and not ask Frankie because he just makes them from a box," Jane's hand grasped the back of her neck and she gesture wildly with the other, "and mashed potatoes from a box are just fucking wrong."
Maura smiled gently. "I'll make the potatoes. Just tell me when and where."
"MAURA, DO YOU HAVE A STAND MIXER?"
Angela's voice rings out from the kitchen, jolting the little daydream away. When and where indeed, Maura smiles as she turns from the door and walks back towards the kitchen to help put the finishing touches on their dinner.
"Mon dieu, one job. I had one job." Maura stands in the center of her kitchen, hands knotted in front of her, muttering to herself in a mélange of languages. Angela is so harried she barely notices Maura's distraction.
"Angela, do you know where that small stoneware dish went?"
The table has both leaves in and Maura is finally able to use the extra-long runner that she found in Provence six years ago. The cigales and olives that are patterned into the cloth give the dining area a Mediterranean feel, so the doctor had bought sprays of lavender and poppies to make a centerpiece. It's not traditional Rizzoli decorating, but Angela had hugged Maura so tightly that the blond figures herself forgiven.
"Um," The older woman bustles back and forth between the kitchen and the table, moving around Maura with the ease of a mother used to a kitchen filled with children, "I'm not sur—wait, it was on the counter by the stuffing? I just mixed it in and stuffed the bird. Why, dear?"
"Oh no. But I put it aside!"
Angela stops between Maura and the table, a giant bowl of whipped potatoes cradled in one arm and a tureen of gravy in the other. "Aside for what?"
Maura doesn't answer right away, trying to remember if Jane told her to not to tell Angela. As if she could fabricate a story without wheezing like an asthmatic or collapsing into a pile of Prada and Louboutin. "Jane told me I have one job…"
Angela purses her lips and rolls her eyes, her "Oh I should have figured she had a hand in it. Told you to keep some dressing aside so it doesn't get craisins in it, right?"
Maura nods absently, focusing instead on how she can remedy the situation within the next ten minutes.
"Every year she tries, Maura. She'll eat it. Don't worry." Angela turns back toward the table and sets the dishes alongside the empty spot in the middle of the table assigned to the turkey. "BOYS!" The shout carries easily over Al Michaels blaring from the television. "Turn that off and get in here. Your sister will be home in a minute!"
Tommy and Frankie push up off the couch, laughing and punching one another. TJ crows and waves from his gated playpen, holding his arms for his father to pick him up. Maura takes advantage of the chaos to slip back into the kitchen and scoop out a generous serving of stuffing into the dish she had originally set aside. Jane is due home within minutes. She'd called half an hour ago to let her mother know she was bringing Frost and Korzak along with her. The blond isn't sure why she feels compelled to make sure her first Thanksgiving with Jane is perfect. She's elated just to have been invited and she wants Jane to know how much she appreciates being considered. Jane gave her one job and she'd rather wear sweatsuits and ballet flats for the rest of her life than disappoint the best friend she's ever had; the only person she loves without reservation or hesitation. Maura will love Jane from afar forever and will do so happily because that's more than she's ever been permitted in her thirty-eight years.
"Comeon Maur! Janie'll be here in a hot second. Come sit down." Tommy calls in from the table as he straps TJ into the spare high-chair that Maura keeps at her house.
"Just give me a moment. I'll be right in." She makes her decision then. Since she failed at her assigned job, she'll just give herself another: she'll pull each bit of dried fruit out of the stuffing by hand. She eyes the bowl and bemoans the lack of time for gloves. Hopefully the thorough scrub of her hands will prevent the transfer of dangerous bacteria. She reaches into the bowl and plucks out the first piece of fruit she sees and sets it down on a folded square of paper towel. Then another, and another and now she needs a fork and knife to gently separate the stuffing without breaking it down so much that Jane notices it's already been picked over. Her focus is intense, so much so that she misses Jane's arrival and is still meticulously picking over the bowl when the lanky brunette sneaks up behind her.
"I just gave you one job! One job, Maura!" Jane presses in tightly behind her and rests her dimpled chin on Maura's shoulder. The blond can feel the blood rush to her face, not only at being discovered but at the nervous fire Jane's proximity is lighting in her middle.
"I—I'm sorry." She manages to stammer out an apology, her stomach fluttering. "Your mom mixed it all together when I went to set the table. I had put some aside…" As she stumbles through the conversation she continues to look for the rehydrated berries in the bowl. Jane doesn't move away; instead her long arms come around Maura's waist and rest on the counter. When Maura finds what she hopes is the last berry, Jane catches her wrist. The blond stiffens for a moment, and draws her lip between her teeth. She's confused at Jane's decidedly un-Jane-like behavior and at the undeniable desire she feels making her heart thump wildly in her chest. The moment she relaxes, Jane brings Maura's hand to her lips and delicately takes the warm piece of fruit from her fingers. She chuckles a bit at Maura's gasp.
"Every year. Every year I've asked the people I've loved to do this. It's become a twisted sort of test for me. Every boy I dated in high school and in the academy, even the few men I've dated since I've joined the force…none of them bothered to do more than just ask my mother to keep some separate as they shout at the television with my brothers." Jane slides her hand from Maura's wrist to tangle their fingers together and slips the other from the countertop to wrap it around Maura's waist and give it a gentle squeeze. Maura cannot stop the sigh that escapes her lips. "You are the first one, Maur. The only one. Ma mixed that stuffing in because I told her. When you put it aside, she texted me and I told her to throw it all together. I was too afraid to come out and ask you, but anyone who is willing to pick through steaming-hot, moist bread for impossible-to-find bits of fruit has to care as much about me…as I do about them."
The silence in the other room is almost comical. Even the baby seems to be hanging on Maura's response, and she is overwhelmed. She worries the lip trapped between her teeth and tries to pull cleansing breaths in through her nose.
"Hey," Jane's lips are right next to her ear and she shivers. Jane tightens her fingers but moves back a little, trying to give Maura some space. "Hey, if I've read this all wrong, please tell me so I can try to save face and claim I drank half a case before I got home." The words are teasing but Maura can hear real fear there and she realizes she's just a breath away from losing everything she's ever wanted.
"No." It's a whimper at most, and, afraid that Jane didn't hear, she steps back and relaxes against Jane's lithe frame. "I just don't know how to respond to something I told myself would never happen. I don't know what to do."
"Turn around, sweetheart."
And when she turns in the circle of Jane's arms and feels Jane's lips gently brush hers she realizes that she has so much to be thankful for, one day a year will never be enough.