It's a good thing she'd managed to procure a cake. Incredibly, it was even chocolate, despite their current location and situation.
She finds him slumped in a dank corner of their most recent hideout, an abandoned autoshop with decent perimeter security and sightlines. He's found a pile of old tires to sit on and is staring at his phone, looking tired and teary.
Oh Kurt, she thinks as she watches him from across the room. He's so strong for all of them in this messed up situation, especially her. But they all look to him for leadership, they always have. He's their rock, the foundation their team is built on.
She's so glad when she can be there for him, even if he's upset about something that can't be fixed, at least not until they've cleared their names. He's gone through so much because of her. Even all this HCI global craziness originated from Roman's plot, was her fault in so many ways.
Jane approaches slowly, gives him every chance to wave her off, tell her he wants to be alone. But he just keeps fixating on his phone, doesn't even look up to acknowledge her presence until she's perched herself on a tire next to him.
"Hey," she says softly. "You okay?"
Weller looks over at her, shakes his head sadly.
"I just really miss her," he says.
Jane reaches for his hand, tucks it firmly in her own and squeezes hard.
"I know you do," she replies. "I do too."
He smiles a bit as he flips through another few pictures of their day at the zoo, photos from another lifetime. But then he turns to her, teary-eyed, and frowns.
"Do you think she'll even remember me?" he asks.
"Of course she will," Jane replies immediately, even as her heart shatters at his question.
"You're her dad, Kurt. Allie would never let her forget you."
"Yeah, but she's too young to understand why I had to leave her," he replies. "She's always going to think I didn't love her enough to stay."
She hears so much of Kurt's own childhood trauma in his statement that tears spring to her eyes too. Even at her lowest moments she'd at least understood that her life of misery and abuse was due to the murder of her parents; that they would have done anything they could have to keep her and her brother safe. But Kurt hadn't known true parental love since at least the age of ten, had been given the shit combo of a murderous father who didn't care enough about his own kids to stop drinking and an addict mother who abandoned him to that situation.
"We're going to clear our names and be back before her next birthday," Jane says soothingly. "And by the one after that, she won't even remember that you were gone at all."
Kurt finally looks over at her, tearing his eyes away from the picture of him holding Bethany up so she can see the pandas.
"That we were gone," he mutters. "You're her mom too, Jane. She loves you just as much."
God, he could be so sweet and thoughtful, even in the hardest of times. Jane squeezes his hand again, then brings it up to her lips and plants a kiss on his thumb.
"Yeah. And I love the both of you so much," she replies. "So next birthday we'll be all together again. But until then…"
Kurt gives her a curious look, a tilt of his head as she pulls out the little box and hands it to him. Then, when he opens it, his teary eyes get a slightly gleeful gleam to them.
"I got you cake," she finishes. "I know it's not how it usually works but I thought you needed some chocolate today."
The slow crooked grin that emerges on his face is every bit worth the difficulty of obtaining baked goods while living like ghosts. There's even a delighted twinkle in his eye that she hasn't seen in far too long.
"How did you even manage this?" he asks, lifting the cake out of the box.
Jane grins back at him, gives him a wink.
"Can't give up my sources, even to you," she says with a laugh.
Kurt holds the cake out in front of them and she puts her arm around him, pulls him in tight. Then she lays her head on his shoulder, tilts her head up to look at him.
"I have candles too," she offers. "If you want to make a wish."
He doesn't say no so she pulls the little candles out of her pocket and sticks them in the cake, one for each of Bee's years. Then she lights them for him, and Kurt surprises her by half humming half singing Happy Birthday; so she joins in too, giggling a little at how out of tune they manage to be.
They pause and make a wish, then blow out the candles together, Weller giving her a significant look when the ritual is complete.
"Thank you," he says, his voice thick with emotion. "I really needed this."
Jane gives him a soft smile, a little nudge with her shoulder.
"You haven't even eaten any cake yet," she says.
"I think I needed this more than the chocolate," he replies.
It makes her heart clench, these vulnerable glimpses of Kurt she's been getting more of ever since they became fugitives. But she wants to lift him up, not get teary with him.
"Who are you and what have you done with my husband?" she asks, mock suspiciously.
Weller grins at her little joke and she tugs him even closer as he offers her the first bite of cake. Jane pulls off a small piece for herself before Kurt smashes through the rest of it in record time.
By the time he's done chewing, Weller is wearing a satisfied smile on his face, along with a couple of chocolate smears on his mouth. Jane laughs to herself at his sugar-blissed expression, then pulls him towards her to kiss the evidence off his lips.
"Mm," he mutters appreciatively as she licks the last of the chocolate off.
"Definitely still your husband," he adds, a little suggestively.
Jane laughs again, this time out loud. Rewards his flirtiness with another kiss, a playful tug at his lower lip.
"Oh yeah?" she replies. "Prove it."
Kurt immediately takes up the challenge, reaches his hands under her shirt and starts drawing out a pattern they both know so well.
His thumbs are just a little rough against her torso, draw on her with a satisfying friction. He knows her body so well he doesn't even have to look anymore, can map out all her scars as if he's reading braille on her skin.
"Do you want more proof?" he asks, his voice husky and warm against her ear.
Jane smiles, her spine tingling with the kisses he trails down her neck.
"Hell yes," she murmurs as she melts into his touch. "I'm gonna need a lot more convincing."
Kurt laughs into her skin and it makes her chest flood with warmth. Her only goal had been to get his mind off his worries for awhile, give him a bit of relief. He'd been so down the previous few days that she'd started to be concerned about his mental health. Weller was usually so resilient and optimistic, it made it particularly hard to see him get so low, feel so bad about missing his daughter's birthday.
So to have him lift her shirt off and enthusiastically kiss her all the way down her torso is more than expected, certainly a nice surprise. There isn't a whole lot of time or space in which they can freely touch each other anymore, so any opportunity to get Kurt out of his clothing is a big deal.
But of course the second she starts to tug his shirt off as well, there is a commotion in the adjacent room and they both snap to attention as the rest of the team comes bursting in, everyone yelling all at once.
"They found us, it's a bomb!"