"Tired, huh?" Jane asked as Maura came out to the lounge room, sitting on the couch next to Jane, close enough that their arms brushed. Jane slung the blanket in her lap across Maura too, watched as she yawned.

"It's sent off. I think it's better - I hope it's better - it's going to press next week, so it has to be better."

"I'll read it later, ok?" Jane asked pulling Maura against her, leaning back so Maura's head could rest on her shoulder. "Just relax, ok? I don't want you coming down with something." Maura nodded against Jane's chest, letting her eyes drift closed.

There was a knock at the door, and Jane cursed, half trapped under Maura.

"Jane?" Hope called.

"Come in," Jane called back, quietly, carefully so as not to wake Maura, draped over her on the couch.

"Oh, she's home," Hope said, the relief and wonder in her voice evident. She'd slept like this with Cailin, when she was a baby and she'd needed Hope. But Maura was fully grown now, and she'd never needed Hope. She had a choice of people in her life, and Hope was honoured that she was one of them.

Hope knew Constance, knew she did her best, but she knew the strain of harbouring a secret for Paddy, the stress of wondering who might be coming for them, the fear that what you loved might be taken away.

After all, it had been, hadn't it? And yet here she was, that precious expectation Hope had sung to every night, had read medical journals to as she studied. And she was home, and she was safe, and she'd found a safe place to rest, not as an infant but as an adult, a bodily comfort she only sought from Jane. She'd been taken away, and she'd been returned, but Hope still mourned the loss of the baby she'd never be able to hold like this.

Hope dropped her ARC out on the table, crouching next to Maura to watch her sleep. Jane would have thought it was a little odd, but Maura got it from somewhere and Jane had done the same thing last night. A sleeping Maura always invoked awe.

"I always forget how beautiful she is, how precious her little nose is. Her little fingers, her perfect little self." Hope said, brushing a careful hand over Maura's hair. "It sounds conceited when I say it, but I think she's one of the best things I ever did with my life. I just wish..." Hope sighed; all the regret of a mother with a child taken from her, a mother who'd fallen for a criminal, who'd turned away her own child in disbelief because if that child had been alive all that time, all 36 years at that point, and Hope had never even thought of looking for her... She looked up at Jane, got to her feet, assessing the situation. "I'm glad that she feels comfortable enough to write about... What she writes about. Your... Your friendship."

"You read The Chapter, huh?" Jane asked, chuckling. "She's just zonked out from the flight. We're not... We're not like the characters in her books. We're just like this."

"I know she doesn't think of me as... I know I'm not... I'm not her mother. Not really. Even though I am, I'm just a blood relative she knows. But if she ever did want to say something, outside of one of her books, I've been smuggling gay refugees out of countries that condone their murders for decades. I'm not... I'm the last person to judge on who someone loves. And I don't think... we haven't always gotten along, but I can't think of anyone who'd be better for her. You've always had her back, and while it hurt when it was me you were protecting her from, I respected and appreciated that she had someone so staunchly supportive. So I want to do the same for you. For you both."

"Um. Thanks?" Jane said, running a hand over Maura's back to steady her as she woke up. "Hey, look who dropped by," Jane said, her voice soft. "Feeling better?" Maura nodded against Jane's chest, unable to drag her eyes away from the smile she'd missed for so long. She looked away finally, smiling at Hope.

"Oh, Hope. I'm all at sixes and nines."

"I get jetlag too. Makes travelling inconvenient. Would you like some tea? Your lips are dry which I know you know is a sign of dehydration." Maura hummed an affirmative, tucking her head back against Jane, surprised when Hope seemed to know where everything was in Jane's kitchen. Jane helped her sit upright.

"Aren't you glad I didn't let you go to a hotel and suffer all by yourself?" Jane asked, and Maura nodded, dazed.

"You're staying here?" Hope asked. "Do you - do you mind if Cailin and I..."

"I didn't really plan to come to Boston," Maura said. "I didn't even tell Jane. She thought I was you at the door when I got here." Hope relaxed perceivably, visibly relieved that it hadn't been a deliberate avoidance on Maura's part. "I'd love to see you both, once I figure out where I am and what day it is. Angela too," Maura said to Jane. "And Frankie, and the rest of the BPD crew." Jane's arm was still around Maura, her hand rubbing Maura's upper arm as she sat up to drink the tea Hope had made for them all, sitting herself in an armchair across from them.

"So why are you here?" Hope asked.

"My publishers have been asking me to do a tour as the series gets more traction. They want to see if we can get enough publicity to get it picked up as a tv series," Maura said shyly.

"Maura! You never said," Jane said, jostling Maura gently. "That's amazing."

"It depends on how well the launch goes," Maura said gently. "Um. They asked if I'd ask you to come to the launch. You know, as the 'real' Lane Nizzoli."

"Oh, really?" Jane scrunched her nose. "Are your fans going to be able to tell that I'm not really Lane? Also, it's Boston, everyone knows who I am. Everyone knows who you are. Why would they..."

"Jane, would you like to come as my guest and inspiration to the new book launch?" Maura asked firmly.

"I just have to ask - it's before the book goes out, right? So no one's read it before the event?"

"Correct," Maura said, finishing her tea and leaning against Jane again, yawning. Jane felt Maura's forehead again, tucking her arm around her, pulling her closer so she could rest her head on Jane again.

"Then I guess it's ok. I'm not doing the next one though. Not after that book comes out."

"Do you think it's fair to leave them fighting at the end like that?" Hope asked. "I have faith in you, Maura, but I am a little worried about them."

"The fifth book starts where the fourth finishes off. The publisher says it keeps the audience engaged," Maura shrugged, snuggling deeper in Jane with a yawn.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to..." Hope said, but Maura was already asleep, face tucked away in Jane's chest again. "It's so nice to see her," Hope said, standing. "And you, of course." But Hope's hand reached out for Maura's face, to tuck her hair behind her ear so Hope could see her better.

"She knows I love her, doesn't she?" Hope asked with all the fierce desperation of a mother of a missing child, and Jane looked up, startled by the tears in Hope's eyes. "I never meant to push her away. I spent so long without her, and when she found me I thought we'd have so much more time - but she left. I hope it wasn't because of me."

Hope looked at the two of them; the laziness of the intimacy staggered her, the way they weren't even slightly bashful about being pressed against each other in company. One of Jane's legs ran past Maura's flank; the other must be trapped beneath her but Jane didn't look uncomfortable. And Maura's hands were curled up, one wrapping around Jane's ribs, the other loose, the back of her hand on Jane's chest, between her breasts. And Jane's hand ran the length of Maura's torso as she slept, soft and smooth and calming, while her other hand brushed her fingertips across Maura's bare shoulder. Jane looked down at Maura and Hope had seen the way Paddy looked at Maura, had seen the way Constance and Angela looked at Maura, but this eclipsed all of them. The tenderness of that gaze - of this moment, even if Maura was mostly asleep - was immense.

"It wasn't you, Hope," Jane said, voice low. "It wasn't me either. It was the job. It was the city. It was... It might have been me," Jane admitted, grabbing the ARC Hope had brought over. "Seven years... How could I not know?"

Hope rested her hand on Maura's back as if to reassure herself that Maura was breathing, her touch light and uncertain.

"I don't know, Jane. But I spent longer than that in denial, and all I got was a fractured relationship with my estranged birth daughter, a tax debt and a grand jury trail for a man I once loved. Don't waste your time like I did." Hope's eyes, always expressive, made Jane's water too.

"I didn't want to ruin... What we had. It was so... So..." Jane's hands ran over Maura's back again. "But she left anyway. She left me. So what more is there to lose?" Jane asked, her voice catching. "Just... Just this," Jane said, looking up at Hope with such resigned eyes. "And this - this is everything."

"Oh, Jane," Hope said, pulling out some tissues for Jane, who wiped her face, resentful of her tears. "You know she loves you."

"But not like..." Jane indicated the book. "She just hit a potential audience that got invested. She's just selling books."

"Jane. I know you're more intelligent than that," Hope said sternly. "She poured her heart out over the course of three - four! books, and you act like it's nothing to do with you."

"She said it wasn't," Jane said in a small voice. "I asked when she topped the LGBTQIA+ charts. She said it was just something that happened and that her publicist said to go with it."

"You two," Hope clicked her tongue. "You're as bad as each other. You're as bad as these two!" Hope slapped the cover art of the ARC. "At least they finally did something about it."

"Easy for you to say," Jane said, her voice tiny. "I can't risk this. I can't lose this."

"If you ask her to stay, she'll stay."

"I don't want to trap her. Not when I'm not sure. Not when... She might not even..." Hope could see Jane's hand searching for and finding each of Maura's vertebra, as if to check that they were in the same place as they used to be.

"Jane, have you been reading the same books? She loves you. So much she wrote four books about it. Five, if the fifth really is to be the last one." Jane's hand paused on Maura's back.

"How would I even..."

"Just tell her, Jane. Don't waste any more time. Please. You make her so happy."

"I can't," Jane said, feeling cowardly. "I know there's something between us, but even when she was in France it was ok because she was still... If we don't work out, I lose you and Cailin and Constance and maybe even Ma - she's always loved Maura more... and Paddy puts a hit out on me, and I lose her too. I can't, Hope." Hope looked at Jane in sympathy and let her hand rest atop Jane's on Maura's back.

Notes:

I really don't have any control over what these people are doing.