"There would be advantages to living together," Maura said that night, Jane's fingers lazily tracing her spinal column. "One being not having to upkeep two places to live."

"Yeah, but I couldn't ask you to slum it with me," Jane said. "Otherwise I'd have already asked."

"You would have?" Maura asked, touched. "I know you're attached to your place," Maura said.

"I'm attached to you," Jane pointed out.

"But I do prefer to have extra bedrooms and a guest house," Maura said.

"You don't have a guest house, you have a permanent resident in your 'guest' house."

"I suppose I do. Would it bother you to move in to my place with your mother living there?"

"I don't know... Jo needs more company than she gets, and having someone home would keep her happier."

"And with our hormonal cycles synched up, there would be advantages and disadvantages to that. Simultaneous ovulation would mean we would both be in the mood at the same time."

"I thought we'd already synched?"

"If we lived together," Maura's fingers travelled down Jane's back, across Jane's ribs, cataloguing them by touch alone, "it would be more convenient. Angela did say she was thinking about heading down to see Tommy and TJ when we got back."

"Yeah?"

"So we could... I think I'd be worried, by myself. I never used to be, but so much has happened. So may people have tried to hurt me because of Paddy, because of my job, because of who I am. And so many people have hurt you for the same reasons. I feel safer when I'm with you, because I know where you are and I know you have my back as much as I have yours."

"You asking me to stay over while Ma's out of town?" Jane asked.

"Yes, I suppose I am. Jo would have access to the yard while we were at work, and I would feel... I think I would feel lonely, living alone."

"How did you survive without my mother," Jane asked, a little sardonically.

"I don't know. I was just surviving, back then. People weren't friendly to me, the way they are now. I was used to it - the loneliness. I was used to not fitting in, to just being a colleague."

"You know you made a lot of choices that got you where you are today, huh?" Jane asked. "I mean, I introduced you to people, but you charmed them on your own. Paddy I had nothing to do with, and that man loves you more than his own life. Arthur was all you, and Hope - she didn't know she was related to you, but you said she felt a kinship, the first time you met? Don't put it all on me... you were only ever lonely because you chose to push people away. You pushed me away so many times. And then you finally realised I was in your corner, that I was here to stay, and you metamorphosised... animorphed, whatever."

"You kept coming back, even when I was deliberately curt with you."

"I could see you, under your scientific veneer, under all that make-up. I could see you, and you looked like..."

"Like?"

"Like someone I could love," Jane said shyly.

Notes:

I don't have another complicated serial killer story in me at the moment. I need to read some crime fiction and up my game.