"My mother sent you, didn't she?"

Maura shifted uncomfortably at Jane's apartment door. "I'm here of my own volition as her ambassador. She doesn't even know I came. It's just–she says watching fireworks with your family has always been a tradition. It's bad enough that your father and Tommy can't be there. Please, Jane. It'd mean so much to her."

Jane pressed her lips together, staring at the floor, still not inviting Maura inside. "It's because of Tommy that I can't go." She glanced up to see Maura's confused expression. "When I–when I hear those fireworks go off, all I can hear is that building falling and taking him down with it. I know it's dumb, I know they sound nothing alike, and it's not even really THAT bad, but–"

"It isn't dumb," Maura gently interrupted. "It's not dumb at all, Jane. I'm sure if your mother knew that, she'd understand."

"Nah," Jane muttered. "She'd just insist on coming over and coddling me and then dragging me out to see them, anyway." She flinched as a bunch went off. "I might as well, really, given that I can hear 'em. Might as well be able to see them, too, right?"

Maura hesitated before asking, "May I stay with you?"

"Don't you wanna go see the fireworks?"

"I'd rather stay here with you, if you'd like me to."

Jane's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Oh. Wow, okay! Sure, uh, I'm sorry the apartment's kind of a mess…"

She opened the door wide enough to let Maura inside, trying not to be too self-conscious. "That's a very patriotic outfit you have on," Maura said with a smile.

"Yeah," Jane chuckled. She was wearing a blue plaid flannel over a white tanktop, black jeans and red socks. "Wore this to Frankie's barbecue. Sorry you couldn't make it. How was Sumner's?"

"Very nice. He seems to be doing well."

"Good, that's good. Can I get you a–a beer, or something?"

"Hm, that depends on what 'something' is," Maura said, following Jane to the fridge.

Jane laughed and opened the fridge, shuddering when a new group of fireworks started going off. "I almost considered investing in some noise cancelling headphones to help me out."

"Oh, those wouldn't do anything."

"What? Aren't they supposed to even be able to like, cut out air engine noise? Or at least seriously reduce it?"

"Well, active noise cancellation requires predictable, constant noise, by generating an inverse wave to cancel it out," Maura explained. "When the noise level is consistent, the headphones can detect the noise and determine the proper inverse frequency required to cancel it out. They wouldn't work for fireworks, because by the time they'd detected and 'canceled' the noise, it'd already be over."

"Huh. Well, damn. Glad I didn't invest in those then, I guess."

Maura nodded at the bottom shelf of the fridge. "I'd take a root beer, if those are on the table."

"Oh!" Jane laughed, taking out two cans. "These are left over from the barbecue. We were making root beer floats."

"I've never had one of those."

"What! You've nev–well, I guess maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Never had a fluffernut sandwich, never had a root beer float. Well," Jane said, standing and getting out a carton of vanilla ice cream from the fridge, "Let's change that."

Maura watched intently as Jane scooped the ice cream into a couple of glasses and then added the root beer. She flinched as the fireworks went off, and Maura found herself reminded of how Jo Friday used to react to them. Jane had given Jo to a near-inconsolable Lydia when Tommy had died, saying they needed each other more than Jane did. Korsak had foisted the mutt on her anyway, and she didn't have the proper time to look after her, she'd said. While Maura was sure there was some partial truth to that, she also couldn't help feeling Jane must miss her.

"I was just watching some TV," Jane said, nodding at the screen which displayed ESPN. "Sports okay with you?"

"It seems like an appropriate thing to be watching today, somehow," Maura agreed, and they went to the couch together.

Things outside were relatively quiet for a while, but then fireworks even closer by started to go off. "Look," Jane muttered, while turning up the volume on the TV. "You can kinda see 'em over those trees there. Pretty to look at - I just wish they didn't have to sound so…"

Maura gently touched her arm. "Jane? It's okay. It's okay to feel…"

Sad? Vulnerable? Affected?

Whichever word was right to use, her arm wound up around Jane's shoulder with Jane pressed into her. She was no longer flinching at the sound of the fireworks, but Maura's grip remained strong nonetheless. Neither of them was paying much attention to what was on the television anymore; Maura was hyper-aware of Jane's most minute movements, and Jane was lost in an almost trance-like daze, the real world sounding very far away with Maura's arm around her.

It occurred to her that she would have never let Casey or Joey or any boyfriend, really, hold her like this. Even when they had tried, simply as an affectionate or comforting gesture, it had felt too much like condescension. It had felt too much like they wanted her to be the girl, the one in the partnership who needed to be protected; who snuggled in, never wrapped her arms around; who sat on laps, never offered them herself. But being positioned like this, with Maura, felt very natural. She adjusted her head a little to see Maura attempting to one-handedly get a spoonful of her root beer float. When Jane chuckled, Maura smiled and glanced down at her.

"I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to be going about this," she said. "Drink it, or spoon it? You seem to have been doing both."

"Yeah, it's a balance," Jane said. "Uh…hey, you've got some foam by your lip, there."

"Hm?"

Maura lifted her finger and wiped at the wrong side of her mouth, but before she could move it to the other, Jane gently pressed her wrist to stop her. She leaned upwards and softly kissed the corner of Maura's mouth.

"Thank you," she whispered. "And… I'm sorry if that was weird."

"It wasn't weird," Maura said in reply. "Actually…" She was wary of overestimating, or possibly taking advantage of the situation. She didn't want to initiate anything Jane didn't want to. So she left it up to her: "Is it possible you missed?"

Jane set down her glass and straightened up, taking Maura's face in her hands.

I think

I am

in love with you.

Jane kissed her, and although the sounds which might've accompanied it had long since finally died out, she felt as though a firework was about to go off inside her.