Author's note: thank you very much for all the reviews and PMs (sorry for the delay, today; I was busy).

Chapter Six – Happy Birthday

"I don't know what it is but... It seems like we can't celebrate our respective birthdays in a traditional way, lately."

A timid laugh escaped Maura's lips as she held out a present to Jane. It was late and the lab was quiet. Most of the lights had been turned off and a strange atmosphere seemed to be floating around.

The two of them were on a night shift which meant they couldn't go out and celebrate Jane's birthday properly: no restaurant, no drinks. Just a few reports to work on and the possibility to be called out on a crime scene.

"What is it?"

Maura shrugged. Jane had already got her big – real – birthday present earlier in the morning. She didn't expect to get another one now.

"Open it. You'll see."

It had been a strange day. Maura had been very busy at the morgue and Jane hadn't had time to stop by for a talk. This kind of things happened but not very often and they always left Maura insecure for whatever reason.

So she had been more than glad to see her friend arrive around 11.30pm with two cookies she had stolen from a colleague.

Surprised and excited, Jane unwrapped her extra-present but stopped right away when she understood what it was. Something happened within herself, something that made everything tip over. Her heart began to beat faster but her blood seemed to stop running through her veins creating thus an odd combination that made her feel dizzy.

"You don't like it?" A thousand doubts showed in Maura's question. They rose with strength and embraced them both within a second. "I mean, I can get another color if you want to... I thought it was gender neutral. If you don't like it then I am sure that they have it in another color."

"No!" Jane's vehement reply made her blush. She had literally screamed out her answer. She shook her head in an apologetic way and allowed herself to laugh. "No... I love it. I really do."

"Good." Somehow reassured, Maura smiled back and ran her tongue over her lips. "Do you remember the day you made the remark?"

Jane nodded immediately. How could she forget about this? It had been her first allusion in disguise to their pact. Her wish upon TJ hadn't come true but it would with their very own child soon.

"I will never be able to forget about it... I meant what I said that day just as I mean what I want now. With you... It's a very cute shirt, very meaningful. Thank you very much."

Jane threw herself in Maura's arms without any warning. Gestures of affection were still quite rare between the two of them. They didn't need to kiss, to touch. They could feel alive with a single gaze, even the most brief ones.

"I simply hope that our child will never take badly the fact we compared him or her to an elephant at some point in our life."

Maura's comment made Jane burst out laughing. She grabbed the shirt to properly observe it. The design was simple yet cute: two big elephants were walking together while a smaller one by their side.

The shirt was for a newborn, a very young baby.

"You know what, Maura? You're getting good at making jokes. It took you a while but... Ouch!" Jane winced in pain and rubbed the top of her head, right on the spot that Maura had gently hit. "It's domestic violence..."

The kiss resounded as loud as it was unexpected. It took Jane aback to the point that she remained still, unable to speak. Maura had simply bent over to kiss the top of her head in a vague gesture of apologies but the innocence of her action found a strange echo in Jane's heart. Something troubling, blurry at its best.

"I should... I should go back upstairs." Jane stood up and turned around to make sure that Maura wouldn't see the veil of incomprehension that had darkened her face. Why was she reacting so awkwardly? It was ridiculous. "Ahem... See ya."

Jane literally ran to the elevators and it is only once the door got closed that she allowed herself to breathe again. She still had the shirt in hand.

"We're gonna be elephants."

Her whisper barely passed her lips but the smile that embraced her features reached her eyes and made her sight blurry. Reality wasn't only hitting her now yet Maura's present seemed to have opened the door to something special within her soul; something powerful.

"How's the wife, Rizzoli?"

The question made Jane jump. End of her wonders. She slowly turned her head around and stared at an officer. Donovan was a nice guy, they had worked together when she used to be part of the drug unit. As a matter of fact, they had met at the Academy.

"She's... She's fine. Why?"

The policeman shrugged then took a sip of his coffee.

"Dunno, you look kinda weird. Like... You know, like when we argue or somethin'." But before Jane's silence, Donovan preferred to not insist and raised his hands in the air to apologize. "Never mind."

"We didn't argue..."

Nobody heard her whisper, not even herself. Still somehow troubled by the kiss Maura had planted on top of her head, Jane walked back to her desk and sat there in silence. She stared at her computer screen for long seconds before reacting. Frost was standing further down the room by the coffee machine, in full talk with another colleague.

She approached the keyboard with shaking hands and began to enter some words in the search bar. Within a few seconds, she was lost in an ocean of possibilities that may have the capacity to satisfy and ease her troubled mind.

If only.

"What are you doing?" Frost sat back on his armchair and frowned at the scene of Jane furiously typing on her keyboard. "We got a new case?"

"Looking for stuff about elephants." Jane raised her index finger. "No. Don't ask."

...

Now you understand better our elephant obsession when you were a baby. And don't say we're crazy. It could have been a lot worse. What if we had developed some sort of fantasy about the way cows raise their babies? Hmm? See. You've been lucky.

Now in a more serious way... I don't know what I remember the most from that night: the shirt or the kiss. You probably think we were really stupid for not understanding a few things regarding ourselves and the kind of relationship we had but I can assure you that we didn't do that on purpose. We weren't in denial. It just didn't cross our mind.

You know what I tend to say about ignorance and how it's bad because the so-called bliss that might come from it is just an illusion while you actually own the strength to face reality. Well, maybe there was a bit of it. We were confused. We knew for a fact that we weren't like other people who are friends. We knew that there was something else. But... But it took us a very long time to put words on it and that's just how it is. It took us some time to understand.

Sometimes what is evident for one isn't for the other. See what I mean?

Maura's kiss troubled me so much. I hid myself behind this stupid Google search about elephants in the hope that I'd forget the odd range of emotions that her touch had caused me but it didn't work. I just learned how to live with it to the point it started fading away and after a while, I stopped thinking about it.

We were going through something very emotional in our respective lives. We had just chosen an adoption agency and our file was ready to be accepted. It meant that a lot of things were going to change, that our whole crazy plan was about to come true and that – at the end of it – would be you. It wasn't the right time to add some more confusion to our singular pact, to our delicate relation.

It was never time for it, actually. But it just happened.

You probably don't remember this shirt but it was our favorite. I can't believe the wind took it away one day and we lost it. Maura doesn't know anything about it but I tried to find it back on the web, like on Ebay or something. I wanted to surprise her the same way she had surprised me with it on my birthday.

Sadly I never got to find another one.

We didn't know by then that it would be my last birthday without a child by our side. I don't know how we'd have reacted if we had known. I suppose it would have been even more awkward. Actually, I don't even know how Maura reacted to this kiss. We never talked about it. I was too eager to run away from whatever it had made me feel to come back on it via a proper conversation.

Maybe Maura didn't live it the same way I did. Maybe she never questioned it. Maybe she saw her gesture as an innocent one and I'm the one who thought too much about it.

Maybe.

Yet I can now say that from that day - and no matter how I tried to convince myself of the opposite – it drastically changed the pace of our relationship.