Title: Ship Two. Fic Two. Trope Two.
Author: art_and_lies84 and heartsways (our first joint effort)
Pairing: Jane / Maura
Rating:T+ (for language)
Summary: Jane and Maura discover the world of fanfiction.
A/N:Don't own 'em. No fanfic writers were harmed during the creation of this piece of fiction. Afterwards, however, is quite another matter… You can find heartsways on livejournal. Please send all negative feedback to her.
"Maura!" Jane yelled over her shoulder. "Maura, come look at this! They're writing fan fiction about us."
"I know; I haven't had time to read it, what with all of my shoe shopping and tortoise feeding. Is there anything there that I should be aware of?"
"Uh, yeah," Jane replied. She clicked another link and shoved the Macbook into Maura's lap.
"What should I be looking for?"
"Just click on any of those. Jesus, Maura, these girls think I swear all the fucking time! Have you seen my motherfucking language in this one?"
"Really, Jane. Considering the athletic positions we're supposed to be getting into, your language is the last thing on my mind right now," Maura admonished, then continued to read as she settled into the corner of the couch. Several minutes of silent scanning followed, until:
"I stick my what where? Jesus Christ. These are some sick people! And did you read where this one put my 'center'? I mean, I kinda always thought of my belly button as the center of my body..." Jane said in a frenzy, palming her abdomen to confirm that her center was indeed still intact.
Maura placed a comforting hand over Jane's and soothed the back of her palm with cool fingers. "Technically, Jane, your physical center is somewhere between your liver and your right kidney. However, I am fairly certain that the author meant your center in a more ... Well, perhaps not an emotional sense, but a metaphorical one."
"What? I don't even know what a metaphor is. How the hell can I have a center made out of one?"
"Oh, Jane..."
"This one's even worse! It says 'pearl' – what the fuck is that? I've never worn pearls in my entire life! I mean, is she talking about a clit? What the hell?"
"Jane!"
"Maura, you're always bugging me about using my words. You know, the proper, clinical ones. I'm using my words." Jane read the next paragraph, silently mouthing the words to herself. Her eyes went wide. "Holy shit, is that even possible to do with my legs?"
"Well, Jane, I did say that you should have come back to yoga classes..."
"What would you call that? 'Downward Facing Perv'?"
"I believe it would be something more along the lines of a 'Maura Salutation'. At least that one allows for a reasonable increase in sexual tension and subsequent release. This one implies that I can orgasm with a single touch of your tongue or a flick of your wrist," Maura said dryly. "Not just once – over and over, 'until the morning light,' apparently."
Jane glared at her. "You sayin' I can't do that?"
"No, you cannot. No human can," Maura said pleasantly.
"… how about a Cyborg?" That earned Jane a swift slap on the shoulder. "I can't believe some of this stuff." She opened another and began reading.
A few moments later, a very un-Maura-like huff emanated from the other end of the couch.
"What?" Jane asked. "You get to the one where I almost get killed and you decide you're gay-in-times-of-crisis?"
"This one takes place in the morgue. We have sex in the morgue. I would never contaminate… I just… I…" Maura's mouth flopped open and closed silently in a pitiful pantomime of a fish out of water, gasping in obvious distress. Jane had to stifle a smirk at the thought before she received another whack from the doctor. She allowed the other woman to compose herself before asking her to continue.
"You know the importance that I place on preserving evidence," Maura said.
"Well, yeah. But you do put your lunch in the dead fridge… it's kinda the same, isn't it?"
"Jane! Sex on the autopsy table and my lunch in the evidence fridge are two completely disparate events! One is clearly acceptable. The other…" She scrunched her nose in revulsion. "The other is not."
Jane shrugged. "You clean that table, like, all the time. It wouldn't be my first choice for sex at work, but I guess I'd do it. But what about all the other great places we could do it at work? What about… what about the elevator? I don't see any of those stories popping up."
"That is a commonly held fantasy among women of our age group, actually."
"God, someone should really get on that, then. That would be totally fucking hot," Jane said. "Is there somewhere on here I can make requests?
"Language, Jane. Language."
"Right. Ah, this sounds promising. 'After The Gun Goes Bang, Bang.'" Jane clicked on the next link and turned whiter than a Sarah Palin rally in the Alaskan winter. "Kids? This author made us fucking have kids?" She read the second paragraph aloud, struggling to keep her voice even and failing miserably to hide her disgust. "'Jane and Maura had each bore a child, the sperm having been donated by Jane's best friend, Barry Frost…'"
"I do believe a curse would be an appropriate response to that entry."
"Yeah, I got more than one for it, Maur," Jane growled. She clicked angrily, venting her wrath on the open web page. "Let me just say, I am not having kids. Not with you, not with fucking Frost, not if I was the last chance for the human race to survive. I'd rather give my womb over to be eaten by the zombie hordes than bear children."
"Mm hmm," Maura said, clearly ignoring Jane's rant. Jane marveled at the set line of her lips, the supreme control of her features. Maybe Maura was a Cyborg. "Look at this: one individual wrote that I won your heart by catching a Yankees foul ball at a World Series game. I presented it to you on the big screen with a proposal written on it. Oh… Oh, this is just ludicrous. The author misspelled a piece of the proposal. I would never be so careless."
"The Yankees? I mean, maybe if it had been a Sox foul... Do these people even watch the show?"
"Clearly not, I'm afraid. You accepted the offer, although we had only been dating for a month; unsurprising, I suppose, considering you told me you love me after our first kiss, according to this author."
"Jesus. Do we move in together right away, too?"
"How did you know?" Maura asked, honestly perplexed.
"Ah, Christ, as if Maura Isles would ever U-Haul…" Jane said with a sad shake of her head. "You'd have to compare the color palates of my apartment to your house, then you'd have to take into consideration Bass's comfort level with moving into a new living space, then there would be all of the 'emotional preparedness' crap..."
"I don't know that term, 'U-Haul'," Maura said quietly, but Jane had already moved on to the next story.
"Okay," Jane stabbed a finger towards the computer screen. "I am not that stupid. I'm a fucking detective, for Christsakes! I coulda gone to college!"
Letting out a sigh that could only be determined as offended, she leaned back, folding her arms. "Apparently they all seem to think I'm clueless when it comes to romantic matters. And a complete dumb fuck at being around you and wondering what all my – " she held her fingers up in air quotes, "feelings are."
"Well," Maura mused, looking sideways at Jane and wondering if, this time, she should temper her honesty. "You are a little dogmatic sometimes..."
"I don't know what that means but I'm pretty sure I'm not," Jane huffed.
"Point proven..." Maura murmured under her breath, earning herself an elbow in the ribs. She leaned forwards, squinting at the laptop with an open mouth of horror. "My hair... it's not blonde!" she squeaked. "I've never been blonde! And while differentiating between same-sex couples in the written word is difficult, I'm offended that I'm constantly referred to as 'the blonde'! I have many other attributes to be described by other than the color of my hair. Which isn't even blonde," she added, pursing her lips in a suitably disgusted fashion.
"Hey, at least they didn't call you 'the one with big tits' or 'The Queen of the Dead'."
"Either of those phrases would have been somewhat more accurate than 'the blonde,' though." Maura glanced down at her chest and a proud smile spread across her lips. "My breasts are rather something though, don't you think, Jane?"
The detective tried to avoid looking. But, as was her wont, and just like that night in the lesbian bar, her eyes were suddenly full of Maura's rather impressive frontage. It was a long few seconds before she snapped out of it and shook her head. Whoa. Reading this sort of shit in fanfiction was one thing; actually doing it in real life was quite another...
"It's like they don't know us at all!" she exclaimed, throwing up her hands. "Although your hair is kinda..." She trailed off as Maura turned a menacing eye on her and leaned back, palms up in supplication. "Okay, okay," she said. "Totally not blonde. Not even close."
Returning to the computer screen, Maura was already scrolling through yet another story, barely able to contain herself as she read an exchange of dialogue between 'herself' and 'Jane'.
"And I'm a lot more tactful than that! I would never say those sorts of things to you. I went to finishing school and learned a good deal about manners! Not to mention the fact that I made it through medical school and sat at the top of my profession for a good many years before this." Jane was worried that Maura might run out of air, but the incensed woman sucked in a breath just in time to finish her tirade. "Do these women think I'm really some sort of idiot savant? Do they, Jane?" Maura's face was at once ridiculously adorable and utterly confused. All she needed was a bag of fudge clusters to complete the picture.
"It's the googletalk," Jane said gently. Or as gently as she could. She was kind of fuming and repressing the urge to throw the laptop out of the window, fists bunching on the sofa beside her. "And the facts and figures, Maur. That's kinda how you talk sometimes. Y'know, like google."
"Well...yes, but do they have to mention it every other sentence? It's offensive. And incorrect! Google is quite often erroneous and statistics have proven that - "
"And there ya go." Jane sat back with a satisfied sigh. At least it wasn't just her getting all taken out of context.
"Oh my." Maura leaned in and then sat back with a horrified expression on her face. "Oh...my goodness, Jane."
"What is it now? Me cursing every five seconds? You telling me to mind my language all the time?"
"Um...no. It's a little more...delicate than that." Maura turned to face the detective and shrugged a little, a faint smile curving the corners of her mouth. "It's ah... it's handcuffs, Jane."
"So? I'm a detective. I have them on me all the - oh." Realization dawned over Jane's face at the same time Maura demurred, pointing once again to the screen of the computer. "Oh."
"Exactly. Handcuffs. I mean, honestly, Jane, who do these girls think we are? Using restraints as part of our sexual encounters as though it's a given that because you're a member of the police force it would be perfectly acceptable. I don't understand it. What's wrong with them? It's as though they think we can't have sex without accoutrements of some kind. I mean, really, Jane. Handcuffs?" Maura let out a snort of dismissal and rolled her eyes.
"Uh... yeah. Handcuffs."
"All that metallic clinking and jangling. Not having your hands free. It would drive me to distraction."
"Riiiight," Jane mused slowly, before catching Maura's eye and nodding emphatically. "I mean, uh… right. Sure. Handcuffs bad. Gotcha. I mean, seriously, who'd wanna use those?" The laugh that escaped her mouth was horribly brittle and fake. Jane hoped against hope that Maura wouldn't notice.
"Apparently," Maura's gaze returned to the laptop, "you would. On me. Several times, if this writer has her way."
"Several times? Really?" Jane leaned forward, interest piqued, but Maura had already closed the webpage and it was all the detective could do to stifle her sigh of disappointment. Still, she thought to herself, it might be worth going back and reading that again, just she could have a clear view of the positions these fangirls liked to put her in. For clarity's sake, naturally. And nothing else. Because it wasn't like she'd thought about Maura in handcuffs. Ever.
"Oh, for goodness sakes!" Maura said, shoving the laptop onto the table and crossing her arms over her chest in derision. "This author was obviously truant to her English courses throughout her schooling. She misplaces her commas, replaces all end punctuation with multiple exclamation points, and her spelling… Honestly, spell check is a feature on every modern word processing program, regardless of the operating platform."
Jane read through the offending entry and sighed. She didn't know what Maura was talking about, as usual; she noticed the exclamation points, but beyond that, little stood out to her as insulting. It was the content that mattered to Jane. "So, she has a few spelling errors. So what?"
"There are persons who volunteer their time to correct grammatical and stylistic errors such as those, Jane. They're called beta readers," Maura said, disbelieving. "Why would I spend my time reading something with such egregious errors when I could move on to another story that's well-written?"
"I just don't see what the big deal is," Jane said defensively. "I mean, yeah, I get it: those things are pretty easy to fix. But aren't you more pissed off that these people have us using things like strap-ons all the time? Like I don't know how to do you any other way…" Jane's disapproval was as obvious as a 12-year-old writing Rizzoli & Isles smutfic.
"A strap-on?"
Jane watched a flood of interest wash over Maura's face. "Maura!"
"What? There is nothing wrong with introducing a phallus into an already healthy sexual relationship. It provides variety, and – "
"I can't believe you!"
"I suppose that handcuffs are perfectly acceptable, however."
Jane shut up and turned back to the computer screen, pretending she hadn't heard Maura's pointed comment. Or acknowledged the image in her head that was making her shift uncomfortably on the couch right now.
"Who in holy fuck is 'M'?" she blurted, her face contorting with a frown as Maura scrolled through yet another story. "I don't work with an 'M'. Who do they think I am, James fucking Bond or something?"
Then, it hit her. James Bond. A look of abject pleasure split her mouth into a wide grin and she turned to Maura, nodding. "Hey, these chicks think I'm like, James Bond. Seriously, Maur. How freakin' cool is that?"
"Hm." Maura glowered at Jane before returning to the laptop and scanning the text on the screen. "Hold on there, James Bond," she finally said slowly, "'M' is what you call me. All the time."
"Um...what?" Now Jane leaned forwards, face screwed up in consternation. "I've never called you that."
"I know."
"I never would call you that."
"I know."
"What the fuck?"
"I know, Jane. But it seems these women have a passion for reducing the names of all fictional characters to their shortest and most alarming hypocorisms."
Jane's head jerked back on her neck and she stared at Maura. "Hypocor...what?"
"Hypocorism. A descriptive name given in place of or in addition to the official name of a person, place or thing. It can also be the familiar or truncated form of the proper name, which may sometimes be used simply for convenience or as a term of endearment." Maura sat back, pleased with herself.
Jane was none the wiser, and settled instead for fixing Maura with a baleful gaze. "Y'know, Maur, I can think of lots of things to call you right now. 'M' is not one of them."
"Please, Jane. If you ever called me that, I'd simply refuse to answer," Maura answered primly.
"What is it with these chicks? Can't they just use the name you already have? It's not like it's difficult or anything. I mean...look at that." Jane pointed towards the screen. "I call you 'M' like, every other sentence in this one. What the fuck?"
"Jane..."
"Don't tell me to mind my language, Maur! You do that all the time in fiction and I'm sure as shit not having you do it for real!"
"Fine." Maura's mouth pressed into a resolute line of dissatisfaction. "Curse as much as you want. You seem to do that quite a lot in fiction, too."
"Whatever, 'M'," Jane growled, glancing at the screen again and watching as Maura clicked on yet another offering.
The M.E. let out a laugh, which she then stifled with a hand pressed across her lips. "Oh, Jane," she finally said. "You're very gay in these stories."
Squinting at the screen, Jane read a little, her lips moving soundlessly over the text before she let out an aggrieved sigh and shook her head. "Uh... so are you, Maura. Especially when I'm being shot at or threatened or... Jesus. Pretty much anytime we're together."
"Oh, look at this, Jane. In this one, I'm receiving death threats and you've decided that you need to come and practically live with me to protect me." Maura turned and gave Jane a beaming smile. "How heroic. Because clearly I'm unable to take care of myself and need a big, strong lesbian around to do it for me. This, after I stayed up all night, wrinkling my dress, holding a gun pointed at your door to protect you."
"Hey, don't look at me. I didn't write this. If I had, I sure as hell wouldn't have written that I got distracted while I was 'protecting' you and had to take a break to fuck you. For the first time. During which I tell you 'I love you'."
Maura nodded her agreement. "I find it amusing how 'butch' some of these writers consider you. While I agree that you cannot put together an appropriate outfit together even by threat of death, you really are very reserved in the bedroom – not at all the 'top', if you will." She read on. "You have a very gay walk, allegedly."
"Shut up. I can't help the way I walk," Jane muttered and chose a seemingly innocuous story. She read the first few lines and barked a rough laugh. "And if this story is to be believed, you're the one who can't keep her hands off me all the freakin' time!Just how many sleepovers are we gonna have in this story, huh? You're always trying to get me into bed and gay me up! This is not all me, you know."
"But I wear pretty clothes and like shoes," Maura said gently. "That makes me less of a..." she squinted at the screen again and nodded to herself, "...a 'dyke' than you. Or so these girls seem to think. Goodness, 'dyke' is such a pejorative term, don't you think?"
"About that word? Seldom, if ever," Jane retorted. "I don't get it. You're the one flirting with me all the time, trying to get me into bed... using a strap on! You're like a... a... a dyke in girl's clothing!"
Maura smiled serenely and half-closed her eyes, shrugging a little. "I'm also gay-in-times-of-crisis, Jane. Don't forget that one. I believe, according to fanfiction, that makes me a double rainbow. Top that, detective."