AN: Thank you all for your very appreciated reviews. It is always the nicest gift to get an email notification to say that someone across the world has reviewed something I have written based on characters I love so much. That you are enjoying this story means the world to me, and if you are not, I would really appreciate hearing constructive criticism because my main intention is obviously to give you, the readers, what you want. Happy reading, everyone!
This is it, Jane thinks as she sits in her car outside BPD, and looks down at the illuminated screen of her phone.
Maura: I've ordered us chinese. Know you've had a busy…
Jane can't read the rest of the message unless she unlocks her phone. But if she does, Maura's going to receive the notification that she has. Jane doesn't want that. Jane wants to go back to her apartment and just sit and drink beer by herself. Or maybe go to the Dirty Robber and join Frost and Korsak who left hours ago.
But, now, it's not about what Jane wants anymore.
Jane unlocks her phone to read Maura's message.
I've ordered us chinese. Know you've had a busy day between handing over keys to your apartment and starting new case, but it's your birthday and everyone has seen you but me. I want to have dinner with you if it's possible?
Across town, Read: 9:25pm, flashes on Maura's phone below a next text from Jane.
On my way, thanks Maura.
Jane pulls up at Maura's when the delivery man does. Well, just after him.
"Hey, let me take that off your hands," Jane smiles as she reaches for the take-out.
The man, who Jane assumes either speaks little English or is just plain rude, shakes his head at her and keeps moving towards the door. "No, I deliver to resident of address."
Jane groans as she follows the man, and realises that this is the guy she pissed off that one time he over charged her for take-out and she complained.
"I live here," she states as they both stand at Maura's front door and Jane presses the bell. "I can just pay you now and you can go."
He ignores her. Jane rolls her eyes.
Maura seems to take forever to open the door. When she does, her hair is pulled back and she's in her yoga clothes, so Jane doesn't complain. She doesn't want to upset Maura's relaxed state.
Maura blinks in surprise at the coincidence of finding two people at her door.
"Thirty- eight sixty," the man tells Maura as he hands her the brown takeout bag.
"Can you tell him I live here, please?" Jane grunts. "He wouldn't let me pay him."
Maura smiles at the delivery man. "It's her birthday, so I'm very glad that you did not allow her to pay you," Maura laughs. The delivery man blinks in disinterest.
Maura hands him a fifty. "Just for future reference though, Jane is my girlfriend. She just moved in last..." He is gone before Maura can finish her sentence.
Jane raises her eyebrows as she locks the front door. "Girlfriend, huh?"
"Does 'girlfriend' make you uncomfortable?" Maura asks casually as she takes the containers from the bags and begins to empty them onto their dinner plates.
"I don't know. Maybe. It just sounds so childish. We're not girls anymore."
"Would you feel more comfortable if I referred to you as my 'ladyfriend'?"
Jane smirks and rolls her eyes. "I was under the impression that you were my partner."
Maura taps a fork against a plate. "You like 'partner'?"
"You don't?"
"It just sounds very professional, that's all." She pours herself a wine. As she takes her seat at the counter island, Jane can feel Maura thinking from across the kitchen. "Lover?" Maura suggests with a flirtatious shrug.
Jane shoots a pointed look at her best friend. "I am literally going to gag if you ever refer to me as your lover."
As she returns the bottle of wine to the fridge, Maura sighs that happy, contented new sigh that makes Jane smile inwardly. Maura is happy. Jane has made Maura happy.
When Maura turns around, she realises that Jane is planning on eating at the counter.
"Excuse me, we are not eating your birthday meal in the kitchen."
"Well where the hell else are we going to eat it?"
"Jane," Maura scoffs. "Come to the dining table, please."
Jane carries both of their plates to where Maura has set two places at the table.
"This is like last year on your birthday," Jane muses.
Maura grins and raises her glass. "Happy Birthday, Jane."
Jane clinks the neck of her beer bottle against Maura's glass. "Happy Birthday to me," she smiles.
"Did you have any trouble handing over the keys?"
"Nope," Jane tells Maura with a mouthful of food. "No problems. Picked up the last box today from Ma's new place and dropped off some stuff she had at mine."
"How was she?"
Jane shrugs. "It's been a month now since we told her. I'd say she's pretty over it since you let her redecorate the guest house before she moved out. Plus, Frankie was there with Alicia, and she kept dropping hints about grandkids. I think we're off the hook with that one for a while. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that she's put more hope into getting grandkids from Alicia and Frankie than you and I," Jane laughs.
Maura is quiet. Jane knows that came out wrong. "Well, I would like to think that she would have some hope in us," Maura remarks as she picks at her honey chicken.
"It doesn't matter what she wants, Maura." Maura looks up at Jane. "We already discussed having kids, and it'll happen, okay?"
Maura nods. They leave it at that.
"I paid the gas bill before work," Jane tells Maura.
Maura looks up in surprise. "We organised a financial plan, Jane. I pay the gas bill, you pay the water bill, I pay the—"
"Calm down. I paid it from our joint account."
"That account is for other expenses."
"I want us to pay for stuff, everything, together from now on, okay? I know that I don't make as much as you do and you want it to be fair, but it is, so no more of you pay this and I pay that. We're not roommates."
Jane doesn't miss the smile that graces Maura's lips. "Thank you, Jane."
And Jane certainly doesn't dare to ask Maura to cut back on shoes.
"What's this?" Jane asks excitedly when she steps out of the bathroom to find a pale blue envelope on her pillow.
Maura looks sheepish. In only the soft glow of their bedside lamps, Jane can't be certain, but she thinks she sees a hint of a blush on Maura's cheeks, the kind she always gets when she gives gifts.
Jane knows it's immature, but she's been waiting for her birthday present from Maura all day. Maura gives the best gifts. Angela buys her a new set of towels, or bed linens. Frankie buys her a case of beer. Maura gives her racing lessons and collectable baseballs.
Jane peels open the envelope slowly and knows what it is.
"Two tickets." Jane grins down at Maura in their bed. "Where are we going, Dr Isles?" Jane asks cheekily as she leans on the edge of the mattress.
Maura bites at her smile. "Well, why don't you open it and see?"
Jane does just that.
"Paris," Jane exclaims, her voice gravelly in wonder.
Paris. Jane loves Paris. She loves everything about Paris. The history. The culture. The art, even if she won't admit it. But the best thing about Paris is the way that Maura is looking up at her with an expression of hopeful desire.
"We leave next week, for eight days…" Maura states, but it comes out as more of a question.
"Next week? I just took on a case, Maura." Jane can't bring herself to care about work. She hasn't been to Paris since she was twenty three, and she hasn't had a real holiday in years.
"Cavanaugh knows," Maura adds. "I wanted it to be a surprise for you."
Jane reads over the tickets carefully. She meets Maura's eye and beams. Maura laughs.
"I'm so glad that you like it, Jane. I was concerned after I bought them, but I reminded myself of how happy you looked in your photographs from your travels there in your younger days and…I thought that maybe we could try to be together as a couple in public somewhere where there isn't any pressure, no family around to make you feel judged or uncomfortable. Somewhere that you don't have to be a Detective Rizzoli."
Jane places the tickets back into the envelope. "It's a perfect gift. Too, too much, Maura." Jane sits on the mattress and leans across the bed to pull Maura into her arms. "But I will gratefully accept this present," Jane adds as she waves their tickets between them. "And I think that's a good idea for us to try this out in public that isn't so…Boston."
Maura bites her lip again.
"I guess the only problem is that, since you've given me two tickets, I'll have to find someone to come with me."
Jane would not have tried that joke two years ago, because she would have known that Maura's face would have fallen in confusion and misunderstanding of the joke. But now Maura knows Jane so well that she simply purses her lips and shuffles beneath the sheets.
"Well then, I recommend you don't put your name on the advertisement flyers for a travel companion at BPD, because I'm the only one who could stand eight days alone in a foreign country with you."
Jane scoffs good-naturedly, and reaches over Maura to turn out the blonde's bedside lamp. "Please," Jane chuckles as her singlet-clad chest brushes the silk over Maura's breasts, "You've signed up for a lifetime of Jane Rizzoli."
Jane reaches for the switch of her own lamp.
"I haven't signed anything yet, Jane."
Darkness swallows their bedroom before silence does.
Jane wakes in the morning cocooned in the softest, warmest blankets she's ever slept beneath. The day she moved in for good, for the rest of their lives, Maura had changed the bedding completely, and Jane hasn't slept between 'Maura's sheets' since before she lived there.
Jane doesn't want to get up. She wants to lay there, her muscles tensing tiredly, all morning. She wants to keep her cheek pressed against Maura's silk-clad shoulder, feeling the heat of Maura's body against the side of her mouth. Jane can't remember why she didn't want to come home to this last night.
Jane inhales slowly. Maura smells like coconut and caramel. Jane runs her thumb along the edge of Maura's ribcage, softly, from one bone to the next. Rise, and fall. The silk of Maura's pyjama top tickles Jane's fingertip, and she presses into Maura ever so gently to still the sensation.
Maura shifts in her sleep, and Jane's hand comes to rest too high, just below the swell of Maura's breast. Jane stills as to not wake her, but when Maura is comfortable again, Jane pulls her arm away from around Maura.
Jane runs her fingers through the hair at the top of her head, and stares up at the bedroom ceiling.
They're going to Paris together in seven days. After a moment, Jane reaches for the envelope to look at their departure time. She finds a note in there that she missed last night. Jane opens up the half page to find Maura's handwriting. Hotel Carte, Deluxe Room. Beneath were reservation numbers and the hotel address.
Maura's thigh shifts to rest over Jane's, and Jane looks down to see the way the covers rise over their layered limbs. It's a gentle, pleasant weight that always feel right. Natural. Anything but wicked.
It may be the press of Maura's leg over hers, but what comes next is a strange, improper thought. It's the first of all the bizarre, erotic considerations that cross Jane's mind as the prospect of Paris draws closer in the coming week.
I want to see what she looks like naked in a bed that isn't ours. A bed that isn't home. A bed that I can leave if I need to, want to, have to. A bed that I will leave when it all becomes too much.
