**DISCLAIMER – I do not own the characters, they belong to TNT and associated bodies. **
A/N: Sorry I've been away for a little bit. A short one just to keep you going (if anyone is reading, thankyou!). I'm, as always; open to ideas, if there is anything you would like to see, feel free to PM me. At some point I would like to write an M rated chapter in this story, which would be a first for me, so any ideas for that; fire away, fire away!
A/N 2: Also, to the kind reviewer that mentioned the dynamic of the text messages vs talking, that will continue. Thank-you for picking up what I was trying to get at.
A/N 3: Don't hate me for this chapter (that's a pre-emptive warning if there was ever one!)
FLIGHTLESS ANGEL.
Chapter 5 – The Trouble with Love.
"So . . ." Jane mused, sitting opposite Maura in their usual spot at the Robber.
"So is generally the beginning of a sentence, Jane." Maura looked fleetingly at the cheque, before reaching into her bag for her purse.
"Oh, woah! No. NO Maura. I'm paying. I've already messed this up, so I'm paying."
Jane reached across the table, swatting Maura's hand away from the bill and grabbing it.
"What makes you think you've 'messed this up'?" Maura asked quietly.
Jane thought for a second, pulling a couple of notes out of her jacket and setting them under her empty water glass.
"Well. One. I took you to the Robber."
"I enjoy it here."
"You're not helping me, Maura." Jane shot a glance over the table.
She sighed, and fidgeted with her napkin.
"One. I took you to the Robber. Where we were interrupted by my brother, my Ma, Korsak and Stanley. Why were Stanley and my Ma even in here at lunch, you would think they might have a lunch service of their own to be getting on -. . ."
"Jane."
"Sorry. One, I should have thought of somewhere less BPD, and more . . . well, more you. Two. Neither of us could drink, so I got nervous and started telling you about my Roly-Poly Rizzoli memories . . ."
"Jane."
Jane laid her elbows on the table and dropped her head into her hands with a thud. After a few seconds wallowing in self pity, she looked up to find a smiling Maura.
"You're worried that you brought me somewhere that we instinctively both think of, as where we normally socialize. As friends."
"Yes." Jane laid her head on her left hand, looking at Maura with self-pity.
"We were interrupted, several times; by various mutual friends."
"Yes."
"Mutual friends, who thought absolutely nothing of seeing us together at lunch."
"Yes . . ." Jane pondered where Maura was going with this.
"Now you're feeling like you don't know if this was a date or not, due to the fact that we simply had lunch. As normal. We were interrupted, as normal. We talked, as normal."
"Pretty much." Jane looked at Maura with sheepish eyes and a slight blush.
"You feel like you've 'messed this up'" Maura made speech-marks in the air with her hands, with an innocence that Jane found adorable; "and you're now consequently stressed, due to the fact that taking me on a date, means going outside your comfort zone. Into a dating zone, that you have absolutely no idea how to navigate."
"You have actually figured out how to read people's minds haven't you?" Jane looked, in all seriousness, at the softly-smiling hazelnut blonde.
"I know you, that's all," Maura whispered, taking Jane's hands into her own across the table. "And I know that you're afraid. That you don't quite know how we're going to bridge the gap between friends to something more. How to go from being friends to lovers."
Jane looked uneasily at Maura, slipping her hands out of the comforting embrace, looking around at the few people dotted around the Robber.
Maura instantly understood, looking down at her lap and raising her eyebrows. She looked up at Jane. She looked like she was about to speak, when she pinched the bridge of her nose, and leant on the table with her arm, slightly closer to Jane.
"I can't sit here Jane, and lie to you and say that I understand the fear that you seem to have." Maura's golden orbs searched Jane's for a sense of comprehension of what she was trying to approach. Finding shy brown eyes flitting up to her own, she tried to convey her empathy. "Just because I don't understand something, doesn't mean I can't support you through it."
She linked her pinky finger with the Detective's.
"Jane, I know you're afraid. I know this is all ridiculously new, but at the same time so inherent in both of us, that we're both wondering why it seems so much more difficult in reality, than how either of us had imagined it."
Jane's eyes glistened, holding Maura's in her sight.
"I can't promise that this is going to be plain sailing for either of us. I will, however; promise you, that I'm not going anywhere. I will wait for you, however long that may be; until you know what you want."
Jane looked up, her eyebrows creased in confusion.
"Maur, I know what I want. I've never questioned how I feel about you, not since I realised how I do feel about you. I want you. I want us."
Maura slowly tried to link her fingers with Jane's, finding Jane's hand instinctively retreating back to her napkin. She nodded in understanding once more, and drew an imaginary shape on the table-top with her index finger.
"What you want, Jane," she whispered; "and what you are ready for, just aren't on the same page right now. I don't doubt how you feel about me, Jane; I don't. Not for a second. I do doubt," she breathed in a laboured breath, "I do doubt Jane, that you're ready to be with me, in the way that I want to be with you." Maura looked to her empty hand, still resting on the table, mere inches in front of the hand she held until moments ago. "I mean what I say, Jane. I will wait. But right now, for the time being at least; you're not ready. And I will not lose you, and the chance of being happy with you, by forcing you into something that you simply are not ready to go through."
Jane was crying silently.
She cried squeezing Maura's hand as she left the table.
She cried walking back to the station.
She cried in the bathroom, huffing and puffing until the tears subsided.
And when she finished her shift, she cried herself to sleep. Alone.
A/N 4: (Continuing from A/N 3) I simply want to explore Jane as the vulnerable half of the relationship, you don't see it being done often and I think we have seen this element to Jane's personality in the show, but not very much in fan-fic. It'll just add a different dynamic. Bear with me and trust in Rizzles!