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Jane stares, absent and unfocused, into the jet black eyes of the horse in front of her. She reaches out to brush her fingertips along its flank but it jumps away at her unsteady touch and Jane frowns deeply. She always thought she’d be good with horses—not like she wanted to work in the Mounted Division or anything, she was always meant for Homicide, but rather in another life, in a not-too-distant world where she grows up in wide open Montana instead of the cramped quarters of Boston’s North End. Some place where she works on a ranch and has a cool hat and wears heavy weight jeans that are washed out and nearly worn through in the seat from riding.
Is Maura there in this possible world too, Jane wonders. She can’t imagine a Maura that isn’t from Boston but maybe she moves out there. Maybe to be a family physician, a modern day Doctor Quinn. She was from Boston, wasn’t she? They probably still do house calls out there in big sky country and it’s surprisingly easy for Jane to imagine Maura performing medicine at the kitchen table.
Jane takes a deep breath, tries to imagine a prairie-appropriate wardrobe for this version of Maura, and reaches out to the horse again. This time, with a much slower hand, she makes a gentle landfall and the calloused pads of her fingers finally graze against the taut side of the animal.
“Jane?”
Jane is roused out of her trance at the sound of Maura’s voice. Blinking slowly, she looks over at her friend. Maura stands a few feet away and looks exhausted—bedraggled in a way the perpetually put-together medical examiner hardly ever allows herself to be. Deeper than the tiredness, however, is the concern etched into her features. Concern for Jane.
Concern for Jane, Jane realizes, because she is currently standing next to her couch, gently petting a mylar balloon horse. Concern for Jane because this would be a deeply odd thing to do under any circumstances and is even more so on a day where they both nearly died. Maura is staring very hard at a spot just above Jane’s eyes and Jane knows she’s looking at the butterfly sutured head-butting wound that Jane acquired earlier in the day. Maura is almost certainly wondering, with good reason, if Jane is concussed.
Jane drops her hand away from the balloon, one of the many horse-themed novelty items decorating every inch of her apartment, courtesy of her (well-meaning if woefully misguided) mother. She self-consciously makes a fist. There’s a terrible tension in her palms and she feels the compulsive need to flex her fingers, to take one hand in the other and dig her thumbs into the rough scars in each centre, but she doesn’t want to do it in front of Maura. She jams her hands in her pockets instead.
Truthfully, they don’t really hurt that much anymore and her dexterity is almost all the way back; she often goes days without even thinking about them. Today, however, they ache. Every once in a while she’s reminded that although she’s trained her mind to leave certain thoughts alone, her body can still betray them.
Maura’s eyes flick down to Jane’s disappearing hand trick then back up to her eyes.
“Jane, are you all right? You haven’t said a word since everyone left.”
Jane didn’t even realize that everyone had left. She faintly remembers saying goodbye to her mother and to Korsak but not much else. The whole evening, apart from walking in and then Maura’s gift, is a bit of a blur.
This is absolutely not the worst day of her life, but it is the strangest.
“I’m fine. It’s just he’s not exactly the horse I asked for, but he’ll do,” Jane jokes weakly. Maura frowns and Jane quickly follows up. “I didn’t really want a horse. The racing lessons are perfect.”
Maura’s frown deepens. “I know you didn’t want a horse, you made that abundantly clear,” she says. Jane recalls their conversation about her birthday in this same room, simultaneously only a day earlier and a lifetime ago. She’d told Maura she was always disappointed by her birthdays. It really feels like the universe tried to test the very absolute limit of that, but somehow the two of them came out on top.
“Why the face, then?” Jane asks.
Maura, evidently unaware of how openly she’s broadcasting her displeasure, quickly tries to school her features into an impassive expression. She mostly fails and huffs out a quiet little breath. She looks away from Jane, stares silently into the kitchen at the half-eaten birthday cake, and Jane knows Maura is performing an exhaustive cost-benefit analysis on what she wants to say next.
“I guess…” Maura’s tone is hesitant and she stops to sigh. The weighing of pros and cons must have come up fifty-fifty. “I guess I was hoping that, for once, maybe—finally—you wouldn’t deflect with humour.”
Jane winces. She takes a long look at Maura, eyes drawn to the angry red cut on her neck, inexplicably not even hidden by a bandage. She feels abashed. Maura is right and Jane owes her more than her usual if-you’re-not-laughing-you’re-crying bullshit. She’s being selfish. For a long time Hoyt was her personal boogeyman and she was allowed to employ whatever maladaptive coping mechanisms she wanted to, but now he belongs to both of them and other considerations have to be made.
“You’re right,” Jane says. She cannot tear her eyes away from the wound on Maura’s throat, the one that’s entirely her fault. Maura opens her mouth to speak but closes it when Jane puts her body into motion and eliminates the half-a-room’s worth of distance between them.
“I guess I just—tonight was crazy, right?” She speaks softly, eyes still on the cut, tracing the red line on Maura’s neck back and forth like she could somehow stitch it up by looking hard enough. “We almost died today, and then I had a surprise birthday party. Like…” Jane trails off as she takes in Maura’s outfit and her eyes grow wide. She looks down at herself before looking back over at her best friend. “God, Maur. We haven’t even changed. We’re both still wearing the same clothes.” Jane reaches out and takes hold of the lapel of Maura’s jacket, pulling it away from Maura’s neck. “There’s blood on the collar of your jacket.” She looks up a few inches and lets go of the jacket to brush her fingers through Maura’s hair. “And in your hair.”
Jane clocks, but chooses not to think about, the way Maura’s breath catches when Jane puts her hand in her hair. Instead, Jane is thinking about how Maura almost died because Charles Hoyt could so plainly see what Jane refuses to admit.
“There’s blood in your hair and my mother just threw me a 12-year-old horse girl’s birthday party.” Jane is just holding Maura’s hair now, rubbing her thumb against a matted patch of dried blood. Her voice has an almost dreamy quality to it when she speaks. “We almost died and then everyone came to my streamer and balloon-infested apartment and you drank beer out of an aluminum can.”
“I don’t think the last one is quite the same as the rest,” Maura murmurs. Her hand comes up, fingers wrapping loosely around Jane’s wrist. She doesn’t pull Jane’s hand away from her neck but it does serve as a reminder that Jane is standing in her space, eyes distant while she touches Maura’s blood-crusted hair. Jane blinks, spell broken, and gives Maura a wry look as she takes a step back. Jane feels Maura’s grip tighten briefly before she lets go of Jane entirely.
“You don’t know you as well as I do then,” Jane says.
It makes Maura smile just a bit. She looks away from Jane, eyes roaming over what has to be hundreds of dollars of horse paraphernalia.
“She knew she didn’t have time to take the decorations down,” Maura says, then looks back at Jane. Jane tilts her head questioningly. “The party,” Maura continues. “Angela was in a panic. She’d spent all day putting everything up and she knew she didn’t have the time to get it all down, so it was between you coming back to an empty but decorated apartment or just having the party. In the end everyone decided that while the horse party likely wouldn’t hit the right note, you might still want to be with people.”
Jane’s eyebrows knit together. “Everyone? Were you a part of that decision?”
“Yes.” Maura notes Jane’s expression and her lips twitch downward. It’s that heartbreaking face Maura makes when she worries she’s bobbled a social norm and Jane’s heart clenches. “Was it the wrong one?” Maura adds anxiously.
“It’s not that,” Jane says quickly, shaking her head. “I just…today happened to both of us. To you as much as me. I don’t understand why they dragged you into a debate about whether my horse party was still appropriate. You went through it, too.”
“Maybe that’s why.” Maura shrugs mildly, as if using her trauma as a barometer for Jane’s is an acceptable thing for everyone to do. Jane is furious on her behalf. “Or maybe they just think I know you.”
“You do know me,” Jane agrees.
“I’m not always so sure that I do,” Maura demurs, staring off into the middle distance. Jane notices that her posture has stiffened, her arms folded tightly across her chest.
Something terrible is happening, Jane realizes. Maura is preparing to withdraw, to put this day behind them and return to normal. She’s looking everywhere but at Jane and with every minute she is slowly folding into herself. It’s easy to recognize the signs because this has already happened a few times. Because Jane always makes it happen.
When Jane shot herself through the guts outside the precinct, she didn’t let it mean anything. She pissed and moaned through her recovery, bulldozed right over the reality that Maura nearly watched her die, ignored how Maura had stemmed the flow of blood from Jane’s body with her own bare hands, and for some reason Maura let her do it. Maura let that day be something that had only happened to Jane, and Jane took it and ran.
When Paddy Doyle kidnapped Maura, when Jane answered the phone openly offering to commit felonies if it brought her home, Maura let that day be something that had only happened to Maura. Jane was allowed to pretend she hadn’t been exposed, that everyone didn’t know her relationship with the law extended only as far as Maura’s safety, never had to explain how for her, the difference between right and wrong was a single hair on Maura’s head.
Now it’s happening again. In deference to Jane’s propensity for avoidance, Maura is preparing to treat the infirmary like another day on the job. Without even trying, Jane must be oozing out whichever repressed weirdo vibes always cut the ribbon on another grand opening of a thing they never talk about.
The usual relief Jane feels is being replaced by abject panic.
Maura rubs at her upper arms like she’s cold and takes a deep breath.
“I should—”
“Stay the night,” Jane says quickly.
She hadn’t intended to finish Maura’s sentence, she just wanted to interrupt whatever was going to come out of her mouth. But hey, it works. It startles Maura enough that she looks at Jane again. She looks hesitant to respond, like she isn’t quite sure she heard right, or worse yet, she isn’t sure it’s a good idea.
Something important is being worked over in the back of Jane’s mind, in the same way that her brain continues to chew on the facts of an investigation even when she isn’t consciously thinking about it. She can’t quite bring it to the forefront just yet but it’s there, closer to the surface than it’s ever been, and for the first time it isn’t terrifying.
“Stay over.” Jane looks right into Maura’s eyes. She can’t bring herself to promise out loud that it’ll be different this time but she hopes it can be inferred. “We should talk about it. We should shower first and foremost, but we should talk about it.”
Maura’s arms tighten around her chest and her eyes flick to Jane’s door.
“Stay over,” Jane repeats. “I’ll get something soft for you to wear. I’ll—” Jane cuts herself off, sucks in a deep breath. She takes a step forward and puts herself back into Maura’s space. “I need you. Please.”
Maura’s body sags, her defenses visibly shattering under the weight of Jane’s admission. She looks up at Jane, her eyes wet, and even muted by exhaustion they can’t help but shine gold. She nods.
“Okay.”
_________________
Jane lets Maura go first and, while she’s showering, Jane selects her most comfortable pair of cut-off sweatpants and most perfectly worn-in t-shirt, then stealthily deposits them onto the counter in the bathroom. Next, she creates a veritable nest on her bed, gathering blankets and stealing all the cushions from the couch to create a cocoon of every soft thing in her apartment. Soft enough to make up for how hard she always is. She makes tea, which has a home in her kitchen because of only one person, and puts it on Maura’s side of the bed. She thinks only briefly about how Maura has a side of the bed there.
When Maura returns to the bedroom in Jane’s sweats, hair damp, face scrubbed free of make-up, Jane has to swallow a golf ball.
They’ve been friends for a few years now, best friends for almost two, but somehow Jane has never seen Maura quite like this. She looks younger than she ever has and seems far more vulnerable. It unlocks something inside Jane and she feels like her ribcage just swung open like a broken screen door.
Sucking in a big breath, Maura looks as though she’s been preparing for a not insignificant amount of time to say something, but whatever it is, it falls to the wayside when she sees the bed.
“Oh,” Maura says, in subdued surprise.
“Yeah,” Jane responds, like creating what amounts to a pillow fort is normal grown-up behaviour, then grabs the pile of clean clothes she’d prepared for herself. “I thought… Well, just get comfortable. I’ll be right back.”
Jane showers about as fast as she ever has, both because she’s a little afraid to be alone with her thoughts and because she’s worried that Maura might make a break for it if Jane leaves her alone too long. She really should wash her hair but she has a head wound so she just ties it up instead. For some reason Jane can’t shake that feeling that she gets in her stress dreams, when she realizes too late that she forgot to attend a class she needs to graduate.
Something is slipping away, something that should have been done by now.
She books it back to the bedroom so quickly she actually skids on her socks and Maura startles, looking up at her in bewilderment. To Jane’s enormous relief, Maura got into the bed. She’s curled up beneath a blanket and the mug of tea is cradled in her hands and she’s not drinking it as much as she’s absorbing its warmth. The background calculations going on in Jane’s head have finished and her brain has chewed up and spit out its results, reaching two diametrically opposed conclusions: it shouldn’t be tonight and it has to be now.
“Hey,” Jane says.
“Hi,” Maura replies.
Jane climbs into bed.
Most of the cushions and pillows are piled up against the headboard and Maura is curled up against it, her knees tucked into her chest. Jane settles back beside her, knocking their shoulders together and noting how stiffly Maura bounces off her. Jane sighs.
“I’m sorry, Maura. For today.”
“It’s not your fault, Jane,” Maura says, her voice distant. She’s already halfway to where Jane usually brings them. Not for the first time that day, the thought of losing Maura finally makes Jane brave.
“Let me say for what, first,” Jane says. “And can I—could you just let me talk for a while and uh…not say anything? This is going to seem strange but I think I have to close my eyes while I do it, too. So don’t, um, hopefully that doesn’t weird you out too much.”
Eyes still open for the moment, Jane glances sidelong at Maura. Jane’s candid tone and bizarre conditions have helped to bring Maura back a little and she’s no longer looking at Jane like she’s seeing her from a great distance.
“Okay,” Maura says slowly.
“Okay.” Jane nods, sinks back against the cushions, and closes her eyes. She remains completely still for a moment, breathes in deeply through her nose, then leaps.
“I nearly gave up in the infirmary today.”
There’s a very short, very quiet intake of breath from the other side of the bed and Jane can tell Maura tried very hard not to react. She can imagine the look on Maura’s face and congratulates herself on having the foresight to do this sight unseen.
“When Hoyt was hovering over me, my whole world shrunk down to just me and him. I was so scared. My brain just kept screaming that I’d lost, just over and over. There I was with him on top of me for the third time and I could feel myself shutting down and I remember thinking that at least I’d never have to be afraid of him again.”
Jane pauses for a moment as she tries to do her best not to fall right back into that same feeling. It’s there, lapping at her like a rising tide. She figures there’s no point in hiding any of her vulnerabilities so she gives in to self-soothing and takes one hand in the other, rubbing firmly at one of her scars. It helps her find her voice again.
“And then you cried out and he felt my body react to it and that’s when he realized he was doing things out of order.”
Jane swallows thickly. She’s gotten to the point where the thing that’s been percolating in the background gets brought out into the open, the moment when the truth she knows in her bones has to be acknowledged by her head and her heart and her words, too.
“Because the wife gets hurt first,” Jane says. This time, Maura stays quiet, but Jane hears the soft thunk of her tea mug being set on the side table. “He was so fixated on me that he almost forgot that he’s supposed to hurt what I love before he kills me.”
Jane squeezes her eyes shut as hard as she can.
“Every crime scenes flashed through my mind, every brutalized woman, and suddenly he was—he—”
Jane can’t say it, can’t put into words what Hoyt was ready to do. She digs her fingers into her palm so hard she might be doing more harm than good and suddenly Maura’s hands are on hers, gently prying them apart, taking one hand in both of hers and massaging carefully. It shatters Jane’s illusion of solitude and she’s self-conscious again.
“I guess you know what happens next,” Jane says shakily. “The only weapon I had was my dumb thick head so I used it and I stopped it. I stopped him. And so, um, I’m sorry that I almost gave up. And I’m sorry that I needed a serial killer to help me realize who you are to me. I’m sorry you had to go through that and then get consulted on party planning. I’m sorry that you were obviously so ready to pretend like this was no big deal and I know I’m the reason for that. I don’t want to be anymore.”
Jane goes quiet after that and the silence between them stretches out. She’s close to panicking when she remembers that she asked Maura not to say anything. “Um, I’m done now. Thank you for your cooperation.”
“Jane,” Maura says softly, and she has a remarkable gift for imbuing Jane’s name with things otherwise unsaid. She carefully places Jane’s hand against her stomach, but leaves her own hand resting on top of it. “Please open your eyes.”
Jane does. She blinks once, twice, and then Maura is back in focus and Maura is back. She’s leaning over Jane and her eyes are clear and bright. The distance between them, the one that stretched and swelled as the night wore on, has been reduced to nothing.
Well, not nothing. Jane sits up so that she and Maura are face to face.
“Hey,” Maura says.
“Hi,” Jane replies.
Maura smiles.
“Thank you for your apologies. I don’t think all of them were necessary but for the sake of efficiency, I’m willing to offer a wholesale acceptance.” Maura’s voice is soft. She lifts her hand away from where it was still resting against Jane’s and gently cups Jane’s jaw. Jane leans into it. Maura leans closer.
“That means a lot,” Jane says. “Because I know how much you like splitting hairs.”
“Oh, I love it,” Maura murmurs.
“I love you.”
Maura’s breath hitches. Jane already said it indirectly when she was talking about Hoyt but now it’s out there, unmistakably clear. It hangs heavy in the air but at least her heart is light now. She watches Maura struggle to form words and Jane hopes it’s just because she’s overwhelmed but either way she eliminates the pressure to respond. Jane lifts her hand, threads her fingers into the still-damp hair at the base of Maura’s head, and pulls her closer to kiss her.
It’s a chaste press of warm, dry lips and it is immediately and almost embarrassingly life-changing. It opens up enough cans of worms that Jane could open a bait shop. All women? Just Maura? This whole time? Jane can’t start down that road now. It occurs to her that she should probably make sure she hasn’t massively misread the situation and so she draws back and opens her eyes quickly. Her reward is watching the slow flutter of Maura’s eyelids and the hazy look they reveal.
Jane is feeling a lot more confident.
She licks her lips in preparation of asking Maura whether that was okay and later, in retrospect, she will recognize how that led to her ultimate demise. Maura watches it happen and with a quiet, wordless noise surges forward. She presses their lips together, presses Jane back against the cushions, climbs into Jane’s lap.
Given more time to think about this, Jane would easily twist herself into knots about how she has no idea what to do, but it’s happening so quickly and it turns out that she does.
She wraps her arms around Maura, revels in the way she can taste that grassy tea on her lips, marvels at how unbelievably soft this all this. Maura’s soft body and her soft face and her soft hair and her soft little sigh as Jane tugs at Maura’s lower lip with her teeth.
Jane kisses with tongue, something she doesn’t usually like but now might die without, and Maura whines in approval. The sound rockets down Jane’s spine, goes supernova deep between her hips. It fundamentally rewrites her entire sense of self. Her hands fall to Maura’s ass, pulling her impossibly close, and when Maura’s pelvis meets the hard wall of Jane’s stomach she rocks against it.
Jane breaks the kiss. “Wait.”
“What?” Maura says in disbelief. Jane squeezes her hip, hopefully reassuringly.
“Hear me out,” Jane pleads. “I just… should we really do this today? I don’t want—this is important, right? This is big.” Jane says it confidently but she still searches Maura’s eyes for confirmation. They soften as she’s speaks, which is all the reassurance Jane needs. “So I don’t want you to have to remember the ugly parts of today when you think about this.”
“No,” Maura says simply. Jane blinks.
“No?”
“No,” Maura repeats. “I reject that premise entirely. Why should this day belong to him when it can belong to us? Why would we ever let him be the most important thing that happened today? He’s dead, Jane, and thank God. But he wasn’t afraid of death. He was afraid of being irrelevant.”
Maura had been running her hands along Jane’s shoulders but now she winds them into the loose fabric of Jane’s t-shirt, holding fast. She tugs Jane forward, stares at her lips with unflinching desire before looking back up into Jane’s eyes.
You want to remember him every year on your birthday? I don’t,” Maura says fiercely. The empty shell from earlier in the night has been filled to the brim. “I’m already going to remember it as the day you told me you loved me and I want to remember it as the day I first felt you move inside me.” Maura’s words glow like the threat of a brand and the fingers of Jane’s left hand twitch at the thought. Maura’s voice keeps dropping lower and lower and Jane’s head is spinning. “That’s what I want. Don’t you want that, Jane?”
“Oh my god,” Jane groans. Maura presses a firm kiss to her lips before she even finishes.
“We can forget him, Jane. It’ll be so easy,” Maura whispers against Jane’s lips. “Make me forget him.”
Jane wraps her arm around Maura and flips them easily, sweeping her other hand out to push a portion of the cushions off the bed. When their positions are reversed, her thigh ends up between Maura’s legs and Maura tangles herself on Jane like a vine, her arms winding around Jane’s neck and her leg hooking around the back of Jane’s ass. Maura gasps as she arches herself up into Jane’s leg and it makes Jane’s mouth go dry. Her complete lack of experience in this area suddenly rears its head.
“I’ve never—have you ever?” Jane searches Maura’s face, her hands pressed into the bed on either side of Maura’s head.
“No,” Maura says breathlessly. “But I’ve thought about it so, so much.” She presses herself against Jane’s thigh again, brazenly seeking friction. Jane realizes she can see Maura’s hard nipples through her shirt and her arms nearly give out.
“Oh fuck,” Jane says. “Okay.”
Being scared is dumb, she decides. She wants to believe that she reaches this conclusion because she is fearless and daring but it’s really because the thought of not touching Maura is indescribably worse than the thought of being bad at touching Maura.
Jane sits up on her knees and Maura looks briefly devastated but then Jane whips her shirt off and Maura lets out a strangled noise. Jane watches as the blush blooms across Maura’s chest.
“Oh my god, Jane.” Maura’s hands are on her abs, fingers tracing a path through the planes of her muscles, reverently passing over her scarred-over gunshot wound before traveling up to cup her breasts. Jane shudders and leans into the touch, entirely unprepared for the way her body responds when Maura brushes her thumbs across her nipples.
“You too,” Jane says, tugging at the hem of Maura’s shirt. “Please.” Maura reluctantly pulls her hands away and lifts them over her head, She first raises the lower part of her torso, then bows her back to bring her shoulders away, and then the t-shirt is gone and Maura falls back against the bed again.
Jane gapes. Not a lot of this is brand new information as Maura has always been confident in her body. Jane has seen her in plenty of tank tops and sports bras before. But the part that is new is a revelation. She sits back on her heels and just stares and it doesn’t take too long for Maura to grow visibly self-conscious.
“Jane? Are you okay?”
Jane nods dumbly. She still doesn’t move.
“Are you sure?” Maura chews her lower lip.
“I thought um… Well, first of all, if I’m being totally honest, I haven’t let myself think about this all that much. And when I did I thought this might kind of be like an ‘in spite of’ kind of situation? Like I felt this way about you despite the fact that you’re…but…I think I was wrong, because, well.”
Jane stops talking like that was an acceptable and complete sentence and gives in to the tractor beam-like pull of Maura’s perfect breasts. She leans down and closes her lips over one nipple and her blood roars in her ears when she hears Maura gasp and press up into her mouth.
Jesus fucking Christ. This whole time.
Jane’s not worried about about being bad at touching Maura anymore. Maura is vocal and the positive feedback is both welcome and instructive. Jane follows the clues, she zeroes in on what makes Maura moan and writhe and dig her fingers into Jane’s back and does it again and again and again, alternating her mouth between nipples and taking care of the other with her hand.
Her current position has denied Maura of anything to grind herself against and she is making that well known as she bucks helplessly beneath Jane. Maura’s vocalizations grow so desperate that Jane, content as she would be to do exactly this for hours, is spurred into action. She sits up again and unceremoniously tugs Maura’s shorts off her body. Her eyes fall to the apex of Maura’s thighs, the perfect triangle of cropped, coarse hair, slick and wanting and…
“Nope, no. Not again.” Maura reaches up and drags Jane down on top of her, kissing her hard. “You can stare all you want later but please, Jane. Please touch me.”
Jane obliges. She parts Maura with her middle finger and hisses quietly as her finger slides so easily through the length of her. “You’re so wet.”
“For you, Jane,” Maura grinds out, wriggling under her touch. “Because of you. Please.”
Jane knows it’s cruel to make her wait a moment longer but once the thought occurs to her she can’t possibly do anything else. She has to know. In full view of Maura, Jane brings her finger to her mouth and presses it to her lips. Maura’s eyes are locked on her and when the pad of Jane’s finger disappears past the white line of her teeth Maura makes an almost mournful sound.
“Jane. God. Please don’t make me beg.”
Jane can’t hold back a moan at the thought of Maura begging but she’s committed to not making her do it (this time). She pulls her finger out of her mouth and drops it back between them and this time she slides through Maura’s sex with two fingers.
She’s not sure that finding Maura’s clit could be any easier, both because it is so swollen to the touch and because of Maura’s sharp reaction when Jane circles it firmly. Maura cries out, grips Jane’s arm so hard there’s no doubt it’ll bruise, and Jane can feel her spasming against her fingers. If Jane didn’t know better, she’d think—
“Wait, did you just come?”
Maura turns a deep shade of red, turning deeper still when she looks Jane in the eyes.
“Yes,” she says, a little embarrassed. Jane stares in wonder.
“Can you come again?”
Maura expels a short laugh. “Yes, definitely.”
“Oh, thank God.” Jane kisses her joyfully, savouring the way Maura whimpers against her as Jane slips her fingers down and inside her. It is so hot and wet and thrumming with evidence that Maura is alive and well and Jane has never been happier. What a stupid idea she almost had to put this off any longer.
She rocks gently into Maura, curling and rubbing her fingers like she always wished her own partners would do. Maura cradles Jane’s face in her hands and they kiss almost the entire time, only breaking apart for Maura to whisper encouragement and instruction against Jane’s mouth. She’s an excellent teacher, it turns out. Jane does as she’s told, improvises a little as she grows more self-assured. It takes longer the second time but not that long and Maura is quickly close again. She’s soon out of instructions and Jane doesn’t need anymore encouragement.
“I love you,” Maura gasps out. “I love you, Jane. I love you.” She repeats it again and again like a mantra. She’s trembling all over and her thighs are starting to quiver and Jane can barely tear her eyes away from watching Maura’s lips form those words over and over but the way her body is quaking feels holy.
This time, when Maura comes, there’s no doubt. Jane soaks up every moment, slowing her hand gradually and following the easy rhythm of Maura’s body all the way back down to the bed. Maura is shaking still and Jane gathers her up in her arms, pulls a blanket over both their bodies, presses a kiss to the side of her head.
They lay there for a long while in comfortable silence before Jane speaks.
“I was right, you know.” She rubs soft circles against Maura’s back.
“Mm?” Maura hums against her neck.
“My birthday never turns out the way I imagined it.”
Maura laughs quietly. “If you’re about to tell me you’re disappointed…”
“No,” Jane says, pulling Maura closer. “Turns out, I don’t hate all surprises.”