Trivia Night
Jane's viewpoint
O'Malley's was just like almost every cop bar in every city in the US. Sometimes it'd be a fake Irish pub, sometimes not, but the place was usually no more than moderately loud, fights were usually few and far between and the staff had learned to be accepting of quiet drunks, lord knows they saw enough, as a cop tried to come to terms with the latest horror to cross his or, increasingly, her path.
Jane wasn't a drunk, well, not often she admitted to herself, but she knew some female cops who found at least as much solace in the bottom of a bottle as their male counterparts.
Sometimes, when she was completely honest with herself, she realised that she was probably going to end up an alcoholic and dead early, if she hadn't found Maura, or more correctly, they hadn't found each other.
She used to like a beer, hanging out with the other cops back at the Dirty Robber in Boston, back when Jane was a beat cop and later working vice. It was part of the bonding you did with your colleagues, helping to build a wall between your abused feelings and the nasty world out there. She'd continued that when she moved across to Homicide, aided and abetted by her partner, Vince Korsak.
Hoyt had changed that, like he'd changed so much else, 'burn in hell you fucker'.
She'd spiralled into depression, panic attacks and climbed into a bottle to hide from what he'd done to her, what he'd taken from her. Even when she was allowed back to work, she'd still spent too many nights drinking herself into a stupor, to the point that she could fall asleep without reliving the events of that night, down in that basement.
It'd taken her years before she could face the night, free from the certainty of a parade of nightmares, the worst of which was Hoyt raping her over and over again, helpless to stop him, willing herself to die to make it end.
She'd started to recover; then Hoyt had escaped and attacked her again. The nightmares came back full force; the only thing that had stopped her descending back into an alcoholic haze had been Maura.
Maura and her own shame at letting her best friend see her like that, a broken, drunken wreck. The nights she stayed at Maura's house, or Maura crashed at her place, were the nights that she stayed sober, trading a disturbed night's sleep for the friendship and company she so desperately craved. Then one night, a particularly bad nightmare had caused her to thrash and moan like an animal in agonising pain, drawing Maura from her room to the guest bedroom.
At her gentle voice Jane had jerked awake, to find Maura's warm eyes and comforting embrace awaiting her. That night they'd talked for hours about why she had nightmares, why she couldn't get a decent night's sleep, what Hoyt had done to her and what she'd been terrified of him doing to her once again.
Jane had opened herself in a way that she had been unable to with the Department's shrink, trusting that Maura would never judge her, would never look down on her with either contempt or even worse, pity, in her eyes. Eventually, Maura had climbed into bed with her and just held her, whispering meaningless, comforting words to her until Jane had finally fallen asleep, to find the nightmares muted and bearable.
Over the next few weeks, that had been enough to allow Jane to regain her sense of balance, her control, as she put the events of that terrible night behind her, or so she thought.
Jane had been able to spend more and more nights alone, less driven to seek out Maura for safety, even though as far back as then she had admitted to herself that she wanted to share Maura's bed, to be someone special in her life, even if it was only platonically.
Then Hoyt had gone after Maura.
That afternoon in the hospital infirmary had been the worst day of her life, worse than Hoyt's first attack, worse even than the day she'd put a bullet through herself to stop a rogue cop. In each case the pain had been hers, unbearable but private, done to protect others.
But Hoyt had hurt Maura. Jane had failed to keep the person who meant more to her than anything on earth safe, even worse it was at the hands of the vilest monster Jane had ever crossed paths with
That's why he had to die. Jane had told everyone it had been self defence, but she'd lied. She had beaten Hoyt, she had the knife and the upper hand, she was in control, but he'd hurt Maura. For that there could only be one penalty and Jane had exacted it, judge, jury and executioner. She'd not regretted that decision in the slightest. Her only regret was that she hadn't put a bullet through his head and another through his black heart when she'd had the chance the last time they'd met.
After the 'surprise' birthday party that night, Maura had hung around till she was the last one there and in no uncertain terms told Jane that she was coming back to her house and sleeping with her that night. Jane couldn't have argued with her, even if she wanted to.
They had sat up talking until exhaustion claimed them, but that first night had been horrific, with both of them waking up screaming at different times, each desperately needing the other's reassurance that they were ok, that they were alive. Maura had seen Jane die before her eyes, for Jane it was Maura's corpse being raped by Hoyt while she was pinned down to the ground by scalpels through her hands once again.
For the next few months they had slept together, each a reassuring, comforting presence as they set forth to do battle with the demons who haunted their dreams, slowly coming to grips with their fears and vanquishing them.
Eventually they had been able to once again sleep alone and had started to do so, to their individual, private anguish. It had taken many more months before they realised that they only slept well when they were together.
As anyone else could have told them, everything they did, they did better together.
It had been more than a year later before they finally admitted that their lives were incomplete without the other, that they needed each other, not as friends, but as so much more.
'We wasted so much goddamned time'
"Hey Jane, I asked if you want a beer?" Anastasia's voice dragged her back from her memories to O'Malley's on a busy Friday night.
"Sorry Ana, MGD 64, if they've got it" Jane shook her head, too much wool gathering. Maura leaned in, looking a little concerned.
"Are you sure you're alright darling?" I smiled, trying to divert Maura, I really should know better.
"Sure am babe, was just day dreaming" She leaned back, studying me.
"Your nasojugal folds are showing excessive darkening" Natalie leaned in, confused.
"Her what?" Mura smiled.
"Dark rings under her eyes, indicative of not enough sleep" Natalie laughed.
"Then let her alone so she can get some sleep Maura!" I laughed at Maura's slight blush.
"We'll wrap up after tonight's game and head home, what time's it supposed to finish?" Natalie frowned slightly.
"Around eight thirty or nine I think" I nodded.
"Let's get some food, I'm starving"
Ana walked back juggling a white wine and three Heineken's, one of which she handed to me.
"Sorry, no MGD's so try a euro-brew" I shrugged.
"It's cold and wet" I took a quick taste. "Not bad"
"Yeah, we got a taste for it in Europe. Cheers" We tapped our drinks. Natalie pointed to a table marked 'Trivia Competition'.
"C'mon, let's get registered and grab some food. Jane here's already complaining about eating" Ana looked at me and rolled her eyes.
"So what's new, I swear you have hollow legs, how else do you stay that thin?" I grinned.
"Good living" I expected the groans from the others, but not from Maura, I swear these two are a bad influence on her.
We headed over to the table and registered, paying the $5.00 per person rego fee, before wandering over to the kitchen and picking out dinner. It was one of those cook it yourself on a huge gas grill places. I don't mind them as I get a steak the way I like it.
We threw our steaks on the grill, plus potatoes wrapped in foil, standing there flipping them occasionally while chatting. Over the 20 or so minutes we stood there more than dozen guys wandered up to cook, plus another dozen who came to chat, either to their friends or more usually to us.
I watched as a number of officers buzzed around Natalie which should have pissed off Ana, but she was calm about it, calmer than I was at the guys who were walking up to chat to Maura.
As I watched however, I noticed Natalie was happy to say hi, but just as easily deflected people into conversations with each other or pulled Ana into the conversation. For one or two who didn't seem to be getting the message, she'd lean in and give Ana a quick kiss, or casually introduce Ana as her partner, which shut most of them down, though not without a lot of disappointed looks, usually covered by a smile as the cop in question realised that not only was she out of their league, she was taken.
I leaned in to Maura and asked if she had noticed it, which she had. Natalie did it so well that most of the guys went away happy, probably she'd had plenty of practice. Maura was fending off some attention of her own however she wasn't as good at handling the interested guys, so I had to lean in from time to time to let people know she was taken.
One or two were being a little insistent, which was starting to piss me off. Fortunately Ana picked up on what was happening and caught Natalie's eye. Natalie was chatting to Captain Turner from Harbour division, who was apparently there to celebrate one of his people being promoted to Lieutenant.
I had to admit she was smooth, Natalie easily pulled Maura and I into a discussion with Turner, subtly excluding the pushy cops who backed off from the Captain's rank, leaving us in a small circle to chat. Turner was pleasant, when he found out we were on secondment from Boston he happily extended an invitation to all of us to visit his division for a tour.
Catching Ana's eye, I gave her a small nod of thanks for the save, at which she smiled gently and winked.
Our meat was done soon enough, so we wandered back to our table, via the salad bar, at which point Maura loaded my plate up with enough greens to feed a family of rabbits for a week. I was going to protest when she gave me 'the look'.
Realising I wasn't going to win this one I shut up and walked back to our table, trying to ignore Natalie's smirk as she sat down.
"What?"
"Jane, you are so whipped" I scowled, before noticing the plate full of greens on her plate, Ana's handiwork I was sure.
"Like you're not?" She glanced over to where Ana was grabbing us another round, then down at the pile of salad on her plate and smiled quietly.
"Good point"
We wrapped up dinner as the tournament kicked off, five rounds with each round having a theme. I looked around and realised that the competition was a bigger deal than I'd thought, there must have been twenty or thirty teams of six settled around tables, happily drinking and relaxing.
Maura leaned in to be heard over the din.
"What exactly is the prize Natalie?"
"It's a one hundred and fifty dollar drinks and meal voucher, good any night here"
"That's a generous prize, no wonder there's so much competition" Ana leaned in.
"It's a good deal for them, look at how many groups are here letting off steam on a Friday night, that's a lot of money across the bar tonight"
We watched as waiters wandered through, dropping complimentary bowls of peanuts and other salted nibbles on the tables. Maura nodded.
"The salted snacks only encourage people to drink more. Clever" Natalie laughed.
"That's the name of the game" I frowned, looking at the table stand with a hand lettered card stuck in it, reading L.A.L.E.L.
"What does that…" I indicated the card. "…mean?" Natalie coloured.
"I had to register us on the spur of the moment over the phone and had a mental blank. The first two names I thought up were taken, so I just grabbed the first thing that came to mind" I looked at her.
"And…" She blushed even more.
"Los Angeles Law Enforcement… Ladies" I caught Ana's snigger.
"Lesbian's more likely" I looked around.
"You didn't really?" She looked back over at me.
"No, I just gave them the acronym, it's our secret" I wasn't sure what I felt, but Maura's hand on my arm drew me back to her, where I took in her smile and mentally shrugged. It was cool with her so it was cool with me I suppose.
The MC, a guy with an outrageously fake Irish accent, stood up, dressed in some weird ass Leprechaun outfit. Introducing himself as Seamus O'Malley, he started running us through the rules, which were pretty simple.
Five rounds of ten questions, each round with a theme. The winner was the team with the highest score at the end. If there was a tie the prize would be split equally between the winning teams. It sounded simple enough.
The first round got underway, with Seamus announcing the round was 'collective nouns'. What the hell was a collective noun? Fortunately in response to my blank look, Maura leaned in.
"Names for groups or collections of things, like a school of fish or a flock of birds" Natalie nodded.
"Stuff like a den of snakes or a troop of boy scouts" I shrugged.
"Don't look at me for help; I'm here for the sports stuff"
We actually did pretty well, thanks to Maura and Natalie; who would have thought a group of owls was called a parliament? Not me that's for sure. Maura in particular was in her element, though I had to smile when she picked a bale of turtles. When I asked what about tortoises, she drew a blank, which I had to laugh at, given how often she pulls me up about Bass being a tortoise, not a turtle.
We handed our score sheet in, before getting a different group's sheet to check. Seamus ran through the answers and we had a bit of a cheer, as we'd got 8 out of 10; a lot more than the team we were scoring and, based on the amount of groans around the room at some of the answers, a lot more than most.
Round two was sports history, which left me rubbing my hands together, that one was right up my alley, or so I thought. How the hell was I to know which two teams played the Soccer World Cup in 1990? Or that Australia had won more Cricket World Cups than any other nation?
Fortunately the rest were the more usual hockey, basketball, football and baseball questions, still I thought we were lucky to come out with 7 correct. It would have been 6, but Natalie corrected my guess that the number three NHL scorer after Wayne Gretzky was Brett Hull, not Gordie Howe. I was willing to argue the toss, but she was adamant and I gave it to her. Turned out her father thought Hull was a better player than Howe, but the rankings didn't reflect it.
Still, that left us on 15 out of a possible 20, which put us in the top five teams.
The next two rounds, on politics and movies did us no real favours, Nat and Ana pulled us into some sort of shape on US politics, but we were pretty clueless on international politics, I thought we were lucky to get away with 5 points. The movies round should have been easier, until they started digging into silent movies and foreign language films. Between all of us we eked out 6 points, really only because Maura knew the book Slumdog Millionaire was based on.
By the end of four rounds we were 26 out of a possible 40, which kept us in the hunt, but off the front running team, called Wall Street Wanabees.
The final round was all about music, which we all piled in on, snatching 9 out of 10, only messing up the name of the male and female singers who sang 'Up Where We Belong' from an 'Officer and a Gentleman'. None of us were sure, so we guessed.
We got Jennifer Warne right, but missed Joe Cocker, picking Bill Medley, which turned out to be the pairing for another duet, when he and Warne did 'I've had the time of my life' from 'Dirty Dancing'. Should have known better, given Maura and I have watched both movies at least twice each.
No points for half right saw us with 9 for the round and a total of 35 out of 50.
That saw us slide into third place behind a group of the LAPD's IT geeks on 38, who absolutely killed us on politics and the front runners, the same team who'd led into the final round, the Wall Street Wanabees, on 41 points.
Turned out they were a group of bankers who won more often than not according to some of the cops there. They were rooting for someone to knock them off their perch and congratulated us for doing so well first time out, especially with only four people.
It was almost 9.15 by the time we made our way out of O'Malley's, it'd been a good night, Ana and Natalie had been good company and it had been a great way to de-stress after a long week, which had been the whole idea.
We exchanged good nights, kisses and hugs, plus reminders that we were catching up at their place tomorrow before going our separate ways.
I smiled as we walked back to our car. We saw Natalie and Ana all week at work, we'd just spent Friday evening together and were planning to see each other tomorrow to do more stuff together. I was about to comment when Maura leaned into me with a sigh.
"You ok babe?" She looked up at me with a smile.
"I am; I had a good time tonight. Natalie and Anastasia were so nice to invite us out, I had so much fun"
"I think they invited us for the company too"
"Well I don't care, I had fun" She glanced up at me. "Did you?"
I smiled; the answer coming easily, mostly because it was the truth.
"Yes I did, I had a good time" Maura's smile lit up the night.
"C'mon, let's go home and we can go to bed" I lifted an eyebrow at the teasing tone in her voice.
"To sleep?" A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.
"Eventually"