A/N: Randomly produced this. I really am trying to get back into the fic world. So here is my foot back in the door. Also this is a one shot and will remain one just so you know going into it.

"YOU IDIOTS. YOU STUPID, FUCKING IDIOTS. WHAT IN FUCKING HELL DO YOU THIN—"

"Jane, you're a little loud, don't you think?" Casey looks at me, timidly, but behind his meekness I sense a hint of irritation.

I take a swig of Sam Adams, swirl it in my mouth for a moment, because I cannot yell at him through a mouthful of beer. I am usually not so forgiving, but it is only our fifth date, and though I am no expert about the technicalities of the whole convention, I do know that right around now is when we decide if we'll keep seeing each other. I am on the fence, I will admit. Dating is exhausting, like being rung out like a wet rag, squeezed so tightly you're left dry and gasping for air. When deciding against commitment, I've always found I feel like I'm unraveling and breathing correctly again.

But Casey is a nice boy. We went to high school together, though rarely spoke, and now he is home on army leave, and I panic at times because I am closer to thirty than twenty these days. Any woman who does not is lying to you.

So I swallow my beer and rake in some decency. And, well, also on account of my yelling was maybe a little premature, only five dates in. Raging about sports can go one way or another – the boys will either become senseless with admiration, howling along with you, or else you will immediately intimidate them. Casey had recoiled a bit, and his hesitancy makes me want to apologize yet hurl insults at him at the same time.

Men do complicated things to your self-esteem.

I settle on a neutral remark. "But…it's the Red Sox."

He smiles, just a little. Immediately, my stomach feels at ease. He smiles again when I begin chanting profanities in a hushed whisper. Really, they're fucking themselves over this game. Idiots.

Casey is done with his beer. I see him look at mine, hovering just past the half empty mark. I am nursing it, I will admit, because we are going to meet a group of his army buddies soon, and I am shit at meeting new people.

This is not typical fifth date material. I know enough to know that, limited experience and all. What does it mean that he already wants me to meet them? Has he committed without telling me? Does he find me too difficult to spend extended periods of time with, and he is breathing a sigh of relief to double this as a guys' night? I consider bailing now, but he orders another beer, leaving with suspended security.

It is right about then that she sits next to me.

She has happened to be here for sometime now, sitting at a table for two in solidarity, slowly sipping on a glass of wine. I noticed her during the first commercial break, looking much too elegant for this establishment.

"You aren't saving this seat, are you?" She addresses me with mild concern.

"No, no. All yours." I smile, letting myself look at her properly. Shoulder length sandy curls, pale skin, slightly freckled, but I have only noticed because her arm is right up next to mine. I look away very quickly, sip my beer, and then look back, because I am not done looking just yet. I want to know the color of her eyes. "Are you waiting for someone?"

"Yes, but she is late." A tiny sigh on small pink lips. "An old friend from medical school," she elaborates, and I am grateful, because I am overcome with strange, irrational jealously about her meeting another woman.

(I was not completely honest earlier, about The Whole Dating Casey Dilemma. Commitment issues are obviously not the only drawback. She reminds me of that, watching her lips close over the rim of her glass, and there is a sudden warmth tickling under my skin.)

Her eyes are hazel.

"Jane, ready to go?" It takes me a moment to realize that I have finished my beer, and Casey has rather quickly downed his as well.

"I promise we're not leaving just because you sat down here." My apology sounds silly as soon as it leaves my lips.

"No, of course not." She scoots over a little to give me room to hop down from my stool.

I wish I would've asked her for her name.

XXX

Turns out Casey's friends are running late as well, and have decided on a new location, so we have expired yet another bar and it is not even five o'clock. Too much effort, if you ask me. I am missing pieces of the game, which of course leaves me somewhat cantankerous, and I am just drunk enough the I need to pee every five minutes. It's a sour combination, and it takes some effort not to act like a child.

We round the corner, and my body slams unexpectedly into another. There is anger on the tip of my tongue, words more foul than my previous frustrations with the Red Sox. But they catch in my throat, because my eyes meet with a pair of hazel ones that I have already (embarrassingly) memorized.

"You again." I take a step back, ignoring Casey's fretting.

"Yes. Me." She catches her breath.

"Did I hurt you?" It is absurd, how quickly she has brightened my mood.

"No, not at all," she assures me. "And you?"

"Never been better." Jesus, Jane.

"Do you two know each other?" Casey has inserted himself into the conversation. I imagine swatting him away, pushing him out of the frame. (Camera angle, zoom in to focus on Jane and Beautiful Woman.)

"We just met back at O'Reilly's Pub. She was sitting next to us." I do not think I have done well at hiding my annoyance. I am angry at him for not recognizing her, because she deserves to be remembered. "Did your friend never show?"

"No, she claims to be on her way. Apparently the traffic - because of the baseball game - is holding her up. I exhausted my previous location and was growing weary of the sympathetic glances from the bartender. She should be here soon." A gentle sigh, a perfect pout.

"Jane, we really do need to get going..." Casey prods gently, but the firmness is there. (I am the Roadrunner, and he is Wile E. Coyote. Now can someone please point me to the nearest cliff?)

And we leave yet again before I have gathered my senses enough to ask for her name. Damn it.

The army pals are waiting for us when we arrive at Lannigan's. Casey is no longer Casey. He is Jones, and I am introduced to McFarely, Snyder, Rodriguez, and Lambert.

"Guess that makes me Rizzoli." They chuckle, taking turns to offer me a hand.

"This is Jane," Casey (Jones) reintroduces me, and then pauses awkwardly because he cannot seem to settle on an appropriate title for whatever I have become in his life. He coughs a little, handing me a Yuengling. I look at the bottle sourly, but sip the damn thing anyway.

They are all wearing civilian clothes, but somehow, they all look the same, with their cropped hair and their calculated movements, laughing about jokes that I will never be a part of. Casey glances at me every so often, and even attempts to wrap his arm around my waist, tugging me possessively to his side, but I shrug it off and feign a headache, retreating to booth near the back as I try to focus on the game. I'm too cross to even mutter insults as they continue to pathetically lose.

"Hello."

I wheel my neck around because I immediately recognize her voice. "Are you following me?"

I grin so stupidly that I can't imagine that I am not relaying humor, but her brow knits in immediately apology. "It does seem that way, but I promise that I had every intention of coming here. I just got a little lost."

"No, I'm glad to see you. Really. And if you really had followed me here, I wouldn't even be mad. The universe is obviously trying to tell us something," I dare to suggest.

She smiles thoughtfully, sitting across from me. "A bit like Chaos Theory, though it is a stretch. It's a field of study in mathematics that studies nonlinear dynamics, in which seemingly random events are actually predictable from simple deterministic equations."

"Um...what?" There is nothing for me to grasp onto and pretend my way through a conversation like this. I am impressed and slightly intimidated.

"Sorry." She blushes, a sharp pink. "It's really not even relevant, because I'm taking your comment much too literally and applying a branch of science to a situation in a very abstract way. But...Chaos Theory is essentially the science of surprises. It teaches us to expect the unexpected. Small, seemingly unrelated events have a significant impact on the greater outcome of a person's life. Now this is obviously a smaller scale, but if I hadn't sat by you in the bar, you wouldn't have recognized me when we bumped into each other. Perhaps I would have left the bar earlier, or stayed longer, not having spoken to you. And then I would not have bumped into you on the street. And we certainly wouldn't be having this conversation now. And there are hundreds of other small, seemingly random factors that have led to the unlikely events that keep occurring tonight."

I sip thoughtfully on my beer. "So you're agreeing with me then? That the universe obviously has some ploy to keep knocking us together?"

"Perhaps." She looks a bit coy. I am hopelessly attracted to her now. "I see you're done with your beer, and I am in need of a drink as well. I'll be back momentarily."

When she returns (with a Sam Adams, bless her perfect little heart), she find me lying across the booth on my back, my feet dangling off the side.

"What are you doing?" She lays down opposite me, the vinyl squeaking as she inches backwards. She turns, finding my face beneath the table.

"I am slain by your vast scientific knowledge. It has exhausted me to try to digest it all." When I see she's taking me a bit too seriously, I add quickly, "Too early in the day for me to have drunk so much, I will admit. Small headache." Not even a lie now. "It is cool, dark, and relaxing here." The bar is depressingly quiet, but I am glad for it now.

"Here." She rummages through her purse, producing two aspirin and handing them to me under the table. Her fingers tickle my palm, and my stomach takes a leap into my throat.

I swallow the pills, resting my beer on my stomach when I am finished. "What's your name?"

She looks surprised for a moment. "Maura. And you're Jane, right?"

Casey must've addressed me at some point. "Yes, Jane," I confirm anyway, because I want her to remember in my voice, not his. "Usually I am a terrible at meeting new people, but I'm glad I keep bumping into you."

"Jane!" There it is again. Apparently timing is everything tonight. "Jane! Where are - what the hell are you doing?"

We both rise quickly from our supine position, exchanging flushes glances. "Didn't feel so great, remember?" How has he not irritated me so greatly until tonight? Desperation leads to pitiful compromises.

"Let's get you some air then." His voice is softer, but not appreciated. In my mind, I have a persuasive temper tantrum. But here in reality, I have no real argument. And Maura is about to meet a savvy doctor friend with whom she will not have to dumb down the conversation.

If I see her again, I will ask her about how to combat Evil Forces in Chaos Theory.

XXX

Fresh air feels good. I tell Casey so, and he interprets it as We Can Go Have One More Beer. Asshole. Too bad he is my ride home.

I am sipping another Sam Adams (ordered for myself this time), and considering getting a cab home. But Maura has me thinking about how every small decision impacts the next, and removing myself farther from her location (or the last location I have known her to be) will make it more difficult for the universe to work it's magic yet again. Wistful thinking, I know. Now that I am expecting to see her, surely I will not. Or what was it that she said? It teaches us to expect the unexpected. It would be unexpected to run into her again. Or maybe not, because now I am expecting it. Is a surprise still a surprise if you want desperately for it to happen? I am turning my brain into a lump of mush.

"I'm going to the bathroom." I don't wait for him to reply.

I do not do things like "powder my nose" or any other primping nonsense well, but I pretend for a minute, before I return back to the bar and am forced to think about how disappointing this evening has become. And there she is.

I blink once. Then twice. "I'm beginning to think that I can summon you merely by thinking about you."

"I checked four bars before I found you," she admits, a bit pink again. She leans up against the sink beside me. "I cancelled with Sylvia, because it was getting too frustrating to continue to wait for her. I could not stop thinking about our conversation, and how devastating it would be to leave our last encounter only knowing each other's names."

"So you forced the universe to comply." My voice is soft, making the whole thing sound more romantic than I intended. Or perhaps not. "Come on. Let's ditch this place."

"I do have to, well, relieve myself quickly before we leave, if you don't mind." She nods toward the stall.

The stall will not lock, so I end up holding it shut for her like we are old middle school friends. When she is finished, her voice comes out a bit muffled behind the door. "I'm stuck."

"What do you mean, 'stuck?'" I inadvertently crack the door just a hair as I respond.

"My pants. They've snagged on the toilet paper holder. And I can't...can't seem to..."

I push open the door, though uninvited to do so. She hardly seems phased, as she attempts to tug herself away from the toilet. The dispenser is not like those plastic ones you see most places - it's an uncovered metal contraption, and the toilet is jarringly off center, pressed much too close against the wall. All a recipe for disaster.

"Here," I step beside her. I notice her panties - tiny, lace. Thong. I swallow loudly, moving closer, seeing from the angle that she cannot that her belt loop has latched onto the side of the dispenser. "Do you...can I -"

"Do what you need to," she immediately instructs, and without too much effort (it was all about the angle, really), I tug the belt loop free. She stumbles into me, free from the building tension. Well, that tension at least, because a new kind is building as I find her body suddenly flush against mine. She just enough smaller than me that her head fits right under my chin.

"Sorry," she mutters, and the spell is momentarily lifted. She leans up against the door, knocking it back into place as she reaches to properly pull her pants into place.

"Don't," I speak a bit more sharply than I intended to. Actually, I did not intend to speak at all, but I am overcome by a powerful wanting. I close the distance yet again, touching the skin between her panties and midriff. She inhales airily, and my nose brushes lightly against her neck. She smells like lavender.

"Wait," she orders, soft, but definitive. "Don't you have a boyfriend?"

"He's not really my boyfriend."

And then there is a mess of lips and teeth, fingers tangling in hair, and not even for one minute do we care that we are right next to a toilet.

XXX

I wheeze like a dying cat on my run the next morning, afflicted with a case of the common hangover. I make a mental note to ask Maura what the scientific name for it. If I ever see her again. Because drunk people are not very good at exchanging phone numbers.

Perhaps all we were meant to have was one just one night of perfectly aligned chance encounters, and that was all the good fortune that the universe was willing to dole out for us. Perhaps -

"Jane!"

I am jolted from my reverie, because there, across the park, is Maura in a perfectly matched jogging suit running toward me. The universe must have a good heart. Or in the very least just be extremely bored.

"I cannot believe this!" I gasp, running toward her, wiping the sweat from my brow. "How is that I have never seen you before, and then in less than a twenty-four hour time period I have bumped into you nearly five times?"

"Perhaps we have passed each other hundreds of times and have never noticed before," she muses, tugging her leg up behind her quadricep and stretching as well speak.

"No," I immediately counter. "No, I would've remembered seeing you." She ducks her head modestly, placing her foot back on the group. "We should get coffee."

"I would love to make a coffee date." Her face beams with sincerity.

"No, right now. Let's go get coffee right now. If we put it off, I'm afraid we'll never do it, and I'm sure we're running very low on chance encounters," I am frank with her, because there is something between us so blatant that it would be foolish for us to ignore. "There's a place by the edge of the park - The Busy Bean."

And we so race each other there, but I end up letting her win, because the look of victory on her face is radiant. (And because I wanted a small, sneaky moment to admire her ass. Shh.)

We sip coffee in the morning sun, silently for now, because already there is the perfect amount of dialogue and moments of quiet happening between us.

I break it though, nudging my phone toward her. "Could you put your number in please? I'll text you mine."

She gladly complies. "You know, we're doing this whole thing backwards. This is what we should've done first."

"What would've been the fun in that?" I joke easily. "We have quite the story to tell now. I hope things don't get boring from here on out."

She take the last sip of her coffee, tilting the cup so it reaches her nose. Her hand is still closed around my phone. "I can delete my number, you know. Keep things interesting." She is catching on to my sense of humor.

"Not a chance." I catch her wrist in my hand, leaving it there for a lingering moment, before coaxing the phone from her gasp.

"I do need to be heading out," she mutters regretfully. "Brunch with my mother today, and I cannot reschedule because she is rarely in town."

I nod, trying not to look too sullen as we both rise from the table. "Hey, wait."

"Wha-"

I capture her lips with mine before she can finish, tasting her vanilla chai. "I didn't want to wait, until next time."

She brushes her thumb against the edge of my jaw, and kisses me again. "There will be hundreds of more times."

Even so, I'm sure I will count every one of them.